"Something that bugs me about a lot of contemporary Christmas movies is how insistently self-conscious they are about the whole production the ostentatious decorations, checklist of soundtrack chestnuts, the dialogue about the true meaning of the holidays that sounds canned even when the movie is trying to acknowledge its various stressors. Maybe because the idea of a holiday movie hadn't yet ossified into routine,"
"Eventually, the owner himself is forced to disguise himself as another vagrant and stay in the house, too, so Trudy can make sure Jim loves her on her own merits. This all takes place during the run-up to Christmas and into New Year's, and director Roy Del Ruth gives the movie a found-family warmth that newer holiday movies have to labor two or three times as hard for, assembling a funny and lovable surrogate family in one of the city's well-appointed empty spaces."
Many contemporary Christmas movies display insistently self-conscious production elements: ostentatious decorations, predictable soundtrack choices, and canned holiday dialogue. 1940s Christmas comedies often approach the season from more inventive, less neurotic angles. It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947) centers on Aloysius T McKeever, a cheerful vagrant who winters in a vacant Fifth Avenue mansion and invites a veteran, his buddies, and runaway Trudy O'Connor, secretly the owner's daughter. The mansion's owner later disguises himself as a vagrant so Trudy can test a suitor. Director Roy Del Ruth emphasizes found-family warmth while balancing class-conscious commentary about affordable housing with romantic urban fairytale elements.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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