TCM’s Christmas at the Movies returns with new expanded edition

Review by C.J. Bunce

Thanksgiving 2023 is behind us and that means it’s that time of year again. Turner Classic Movies is back showing some of the best Christmas movies from across the decades. Five years ago host Ben Mankiewicz interviewed author Jeremy Arnold as they screened thirty movies selected for Arnold’s new book TCM’s Christmas in the Movies–30 Classics to Celebrate the Season reviewed here at borg. Arnold is back this year with a follow-up, TCM’s Christmas at the Movies Revised and Expanded Edition–35 Classics to Celebrate the Season, available here at Amazon, adding five new recommendations and several essays that discuss other films that didn’t make the first cut.

First off, I appreciate the publisher chose to keep White Christmas on the cover of the new volume–of all the movies it’s hard to deny the beauty of those costumes defined the genre for the century. The book is indeed expanded, from 208 pages to 270 pages, but that understates the difference because the dimensions of the book pages are also larger by an inch. Five years later it’s interesting to revisit the subject and see how difficult it is to identify theatrical releases to make the cut for any definition of classic. Professor Robert Schofield would have looked back beyond 50 years to get such a status, but publishers believe a book like this needs currency to attract an audience, which means a few films are included from this millennium, including Elf, a true modern classic to be sure.

Arnold dug around to ensure this list of movies includes several films that even avid movie watchers may have missed. For each entry Arnold discusses the actors, plot, audience reception and the impact of the film, and why it’s a good Christmas season film for audiences today. For this edition he adds The Cheaters (1945), It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), Cash on Demand (1961), the Whitney Houston and Denzel Washington movie The Preacher’s Wife (1996), and Joyeux Noel (2005). More important are the author’s essays on Christmas movie cartoons, 1947 as a big, necessary holiday movie year, an essay on why there aren’t more noir Christmas features, a study of all the movies based on 3 Godfathers, a discussion of key adaptations of A Christmas Carol, an essay about the three other Little Women adaptations, and an essay on movies this century so far.

Most of the original material is not much different. This edition doesn’t discard any movies from the last, and it includes Die Hard and the usual suspects like Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, and A Christmas Story, plus some lesser known gems, like Remember the Night, the first of four films that would pair Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, plus Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotten in I’ll Be Seeing You, and Humphrey Bogart in We’re No Angels. Arnold picks up genre films Gremlins and The Nightmare Before Christmas, and even a few Westerns, including 3 Godfathers starring John Wayne. These aren’t all your typical happy holiday films. Arnold sees as a theme of many films set during Christmas the dysfunctional family–a component of more Christmas classics than you might think.

Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in *Remember the Night.*

I was disappointed to see that the five new, added major movies of discussion weren’t Lady in the Lake (1946), A Muppet Christmas Carol (reviewed here), Arthur Christmas, The Man Who Invented Christmas (discussed here), and Sergio Pablos’ superb animated film Klaus (reviewed here). Lady in the Lake (reviewed here) isn’t just a set piece at Christmas and busts Arnold’s theory about film noir and Christmas as a questionable preferred pairing, but at least he refers to it in this edition. But I think these five have more to offer than at least half of the 35 picks.

Arnold included a reference to the television show A Charlie Brown Christmas, but not How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and these beloved, perennial Christmas classics make you think that if Arnold revised his boundaries for his list it may have even wider reader appeal, including things like shorts, which would bring in Aardman’s The Flight Before Christmas (reviewed here). That said, this is a TCM library book, and TCM is all about film classics, which most viewers see as closer to the Golden Age of cinema than today. So there are no surprises here. But everyone is different and every reader could probably find easy swaps, like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “ripped from the headlines” Jingle All the Way for the flashy, insipid Brit celebrity party Love Actually, although both are lesser films that celebrate what is wrong with the modern holiday experience. The cream of the 35 selections probably belongs with 23 movies with the remaining 12 more swappable for those films that only get a brief mention, or didn’t make the book at all, like Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause, Christmas with the Kranks, or Fred Claus, or more recently, David Harbour’s Violent Night or the Will Ferrell team-up with Ryan Reynolds, Spirited (reviewed here). Maybe new movies like Eddie Murphy’s Candy Cane Lane or Lil Rel Howery and Ludacris’s Dashing Through the Snow (review coming tomorrow) will make a future list–they’d certainly add more diversity for the genre.

Bigger and with more good content than the last edition, there’s something for everyone in TCM’s Christmas in the Movies Revised & Expanded Edition–35 Classics to Celebrate the Season, and it’s a great prompt to add some classics you haven’t seen to your December television watch list. Full of color and black and white photo stills, movie posters, and more, TCM’s Christmas in the Movies Revised & Expanded Edition–35 Classics to Celebrate the Season is available from Running Press now here at Amazon.

Don’t miss the other volumes from TCM’s film library reviewed here at borg: 52 Must-See Movies That Matter, 52 More Must-See Movies That Matter, Must-See Sci-Fi, Dynamic Dames, Forbidden Hollywood, Viva Hollywood, Fright Favorites, Summer Movies: 30 Sun-Drenched Classics, TCM’s Hollywood Victory, TCM’s Danger on the Silver Screen, TCM’s Rock on Film, TCM’s Essential Directors, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, But Have You Read the Book?, Eddie Muller’s Noir Bar, Lena Horne: Goddess Reclaimed, and TCM’s 20th Century Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio.