Welcome to The Twelve Ways of Christmas, where we unpack weird and overlooked holiday films. And let’s face it, the blog roll could use the attention.
With little rhyme or reason, check in from now until The Day That Must Not Be Named for a new entry.
Peter Godfrey’s 1945 classic, Christmas in Connecticut, blows the lid off the life of Barbara Stanwyck’s food writer, whose widely popular articles are written from the perspective of a family she doesn’t have. When her publisher (Sydney Greenstreet) insists on inviting a war hero (Dennis Morgan) over for dinner as a publicity stunt, Stanwyck scrambles to preserve the cozy home life presented in her writing.
This is not that movie.
Out of all the movies to direct, why Arnold Schwarzenegger chose to remake Christmas in Connecticut for his directorial debut is beyond me. To this date his first and only project behind the camera, this made-for-TV movie recasts Dyan Cannon as the Barbara Stanwyck role, this time as Elizabeth Blane, who collects knick-knacks and eats candlelit dinners by her lonesome. Those meals of course are all cooked by a personal homemaker because contrary to the beliefs of her rabid TV fanbase, Elizabeth can’t cook. Panic ensues when her producer Alex Yardley (Tony Curtis) decides to capitalize on the sudden fame of a park ranger (Kris Kristofferson) whose house burns down after saving two boys from near-death. This time, Elizabeth ships out to the Connecticut wilderness with her very own personal faux family, ready to put on a smile for Ranger Jefferson Jones and the cameras for their live TV special. Who wouldn’t watch that?
It’s cheesy. It’s melodramatic. Kris Kristofferson does sweaty dips in the first few minutes. This is the kind of bumpy ride Schwarzenegger takes us on. As older iterations of their 1945 counterparts, Cannon and Kristofferson don’t have a lot of chemistry and watching Kristofferson’s park ranger not flirt with a woman he believes is happily married doesn’t hilariously cut through the retirement home atmosphere of the fabricated family setup. Schwarzenegger and teleplay writer Janet Brownell can’t hack it when it comes to building up their domestic sphere. They do however, find far more success in burning everything to the ground. Too soon?
Everything comes undone before a live audience (spoiler alert), but Christmas in Connecticut isn’t cynical in its intentions. Cannon’s Elizabeth Blane comes off as a genuinely gracious TV personality, one who gives her scrambling TV crew much-needed breaks. By comparison to Curtis’s control freak producer, she comes off as downright sympathetic, and as her “grandson” barfs behind the tree during the televised meltdown, Elizabeth keeps her cool. She’s not afraid to admit that she only knows how to cook flapjacks, that none of these people are related to her and (here’s the important part) she’s not actually married.
Elizabeth and the rugged Jefferson Jones eventually fall for one another and, albeit briefly, on live television — before the network head comes to pull the plug on the disaster. Amid the chaos of a “Christmas family special” that features an undercooked turkey and a drunk not-husband, Cannon and Kristofferson’s embrace feels a lot like that of Bruce Willis and Bonnie Bedelia at the end of Die Hard. There’s a cynicism to John McTiernan’s holiday action masterpiece not unlike the inherent cynicism in a made-for-TV remake directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. But despite the flaccid romance (and at least one self-serving Terminator reference), Christmas in Connecticut believes that its enduring message of love between two sexagenarians is worth all the Arnold Schwarzenegger cameos in the world.
Way #1: Batman Returns
Way #2: Black Nativity
Way #3: The Gingerdead Man
Way #4: The Ice Harvest
Way #5: Christmas in July
Way #6: Fred Claus
Way #7: Mon oncle Antoine