Rhapsodies

Since the holidays are upon us I decided to go with Christmas movies or in this case christmas-ish films since in both of their cases to call them Christmas films is a bit of a stretch. With one taking place at Christmas and the other one while technically a Christmas isn’t much of one.

My first film Billy Wilder’s The Apartment was one of those films I knew about for years, but despite being a Billy Wilder fan, had never gotten around to seeing it. (To be perfectly hones I think I used to get it mixed up with Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger)

Jack Lemmon plays a CC (Buddy Boy) Baxter An office drone working at an insurance firm. His life isn’t really going anywhere with the only thing resembling a private life is an infatuation with a cute elevator operator played by Shirley MacLaine, who he is completely not stalking (he just happened to find out her dress by chance) As a sideline he lends out his apartment to several of his managers on evenings for their extramarital affairs. In this capacity he is taken for granted and it’s beginning to stretch him thin (having to make several phone calls to have one night to sleep when he catches a cold when he’s accidentally locked out for a night.

Just as it seems like things can’t get any worse an even bigger boss played by Fred McMurray outbids the rest of the higher ups for the use of the apartment. Things get even worse when CC finds out his current fling is the elevator operator.

This was a fun and cynical film.

My next film was Capra’s Meet John Doe. Tells the story of Ann Mitchell a columnist (played by Barbara Stanwyck)  who has just been downsized by her paper. In a fit of pique she finishes her last column with a quote from a bogus letter by an unemployed “John Doe” who plans to commit suicide on christmas eve as a protest against an unjust society.

Much to everybody’s surprise the column becomes a media sensation. Ann is rehired to continue the facade as well as hire a “real” John Doe, a hobo named Long John Willoughby (played by Garry Cooper.) The success continues creating a John Doe movement based around being a better neighbor… Gradually Willoughby begins to believe the hype that has been written for him. When he discovers that the movement has been funded by a newspaper executive as a road to the White House things go badly.

I had mixed feelings about this film. It’s very much up to Capra’s standards in both art and craft but at the time it’s very much a movie with an agenda and gets very preachy several times. Still the be a better neighbor part is a very good message even if it’s frequently heavy handed.

But Cooper and Mitchell give a performance that makes it work.

My favorite part is when a group of people coming to Willoughby with the story of how they made friends with neighbors who they never knew, or even liked for a long time simply by talking to them.