Jonathan Lisecki | Gayby / 2010

political assimilation

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jonathan Lisecki (screenplay and director) Gayby / 2010 [11 minutes]

 

This quite charming short film of only 11 minutes serves as a kind of template for director Jonathan Lisecki’s feature film of the same name and subject of 2012.

    But as one commentator put it, in a sense you can’t improve it much more than this acerbic and clever work in which two friends from college meet up again after some time apart. Matt (Matthew Wilkas) has been in a six-year relationship with Tom, which he finally realizes has been doomed from the start, although he continually keeps talking about his ex, obviously compelled by the love that went sour.

     His female friend, Jenn (Jenn Harris) has been moved on from teaching Pilates to Hot yoga, which Matt somewhat mocks: “You get so thirsty.”

      They briefly talk about their long relationship and the reasons for their parting of the ways, while still revealing that they care about one another as friends. But their meeting on this day is apparently about something else. Jenn has decided to have a baby—Matt’s baby, without the help of intrusive doctors, which in any event she can’t afford. She hopes, in fact, that he will also be involved with the child. The one stipulation is that they do it “the old fashioned way,” both wondering, quite comically whether that will be possible.

       He assures her that as a male he can accomplish that, simply by sticking it in. But when they actually get together in bed, the rules they both set up rather comically demonstrate his total lack of interest in females and her incomprehension of gay men. He decides to just begin by masturbating and when he’s near climax to “stick it in,” but she talks, commenting on his size (actually quite large), etc. until he insists she be quiet, obviously focusing on the opposite sex.

       They finally accomplish the task, and wait for a while for the results of the test, retreating to the roof to talk and suddenly realize what they may have just done. Can they truly raise a baby together? What were they thinking of? Neither have enough money, although she reveals that she has been left a trust fund from her aunt for just such an occasion. But doubts engulf them both comically as they wait to discover whether this new adventure in their lives has been successful.

       Yet through this all, with their comic banter and their friendly argumentation, we realize that, in fact, they might be the perfect couple for a “gayby”—although Matt reminds Jenn that a true “gayby” has to have two gay parents.

       He observes that he’s recently seen a documentary about gay couples having babies which makes gay life seem so much about assimilation when for him and his generation it was all political. Yet secretly, he envied the gay couples talking about their children. But still…are these two odd people ready for what the test might reveal? They take out cigarettes but refuse to smoke them just in case Jenn might already be pregnant as the camera switches off.

       I will certainly review the 2012 feature version when I find a copy.

 

Los Angeles, February 21, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2024).

Howard Hawks | Rio Lobo / 1970

irritable comfort

by Douglas Messerli

 

Leigh Brackett and Burton Wohl (screenplay), based on a story by Burton Wohl, Howard Hawks (director) Rio Lobo / 1970

 

At times in director Howard Hawk's last film, Rio Lobo, it almost seems as if he is tempting the Hollywood idols. Except for the dozens of brilliantly comic one-liners of Brackett's script, the story is a shaggy dog tale without any "fur" to it. And it's hard to imagine a cast of less convincing actors than the Mexican heartthrob Jorge Rivero (who Wayne addresses as "Frenchy" throughout), Brazilian actress Jennifer O'Neill (Rio Lobo was clearly the best movie of her career), and future studio director, Sherry Lansing! Publisher George Plimpton plays the 4th Gunman. Even Jack Elam (standing in for Walter Brennan and Arthur Hunnicutt) and John Wayne, at his most laconic (in one of his first lines of the film Wayne reports to his soldier friend, "Ned, your neck's broken."), have seen better days. At one point, as the Rebels try to carry Wayne to his horse, they report what is obvious to all: "He's heavier than a baby whale!"

 

    The film begins near the end of the Civil War as Col. Cord McNally (Wayne) and his Union soldiers attempt to transfer a large container of money from one town to another. The Rebels, headed by Capt. Pierre Cordona, whip up a plot to steal the money by greasing the tracks, rigging up trees with ropes, and tossing a hornet's nest into the armored car wherein the Union soldiers are contained. The plot succeeds, and McNally, determined to seek out the Rebels, is captured and forced to lead them out of harm's way. But as he quietly leads them around a Union encampment, he shouts out for the troops, and the Rebels are foiled.

     None of these series of high adventures, however, has any major significance for the rest of the film. The War is declared over the moment the rebels are captured, and McNally treats his former enemies to a drink. Their actions, he reasons, were determined by war; the men he's after are the treasonous Union soldiers who clearly betrayed their own forces by leaking information to the other side. Neither of the Rebel soldiers knows the name of the two traitors. McNally charges Cordona and his friend, Tuscarora Phillips to report to him through the sheriff of Blackthorne, Texas if they ever encounter these two men again.

     In Blackthorne, McNally awaits the appearance of Cordona, bedded down with a woman. Cordona has evidently encountered the men. Suddenly a gun-toting woman, Shasta Delaney (O'Neill) enters, demanding to see the sheriff: there has been a murder in Rio Lobo. Blackthorne sheriff Pat Cronin reports that it's out of his jurisdiction. Delaney reports, however, that the sheriff of Rio Lobo is corrupt and is himself involved in the shooting. A posse from the nearby town arrives to take Shasta away. She shoots one of the men, Whitey, under the table and McNally finishes off all but one of the rest; the final posse member is about to shoot McNally in the back, when Cordona appears, pulling up his pants and shooting the other man dead. Whitey, Cordona reports, has been one of the traitors.

     Shasta faints and Cordona insists that she should be taken to his room, as he dismisses the woman with whom he has just shared the bed. Shasta's awakening is one of the most humorous scenes in the film, and best conveys why Rio Lobo works despite its loony storyline and its unconvincing actors:

 

                  [Shasta wakes up in Cordona's bed after fainting]

                  Shasta: What am I doing here?

                  Cord McNally: Well, you fainted after you shot Whitey, so we put you

                       to bed.

                  Shasta: Wait a minute! Where are my clothes? Which one of you took my

                        clothes?

                   Cordona: I did.

                   Shasta: Why?

                   Cordona: Well, we flipped a coin and I won?

                   Shasta: Where are your pants?

                   Cordona: You're sleeping on them.

 

Brackett, in my estimation, should have won an award just for those lines!

    

     Off go the unlikely trio, McNally, Cordona, and Shasta, to Rio Lobo, 70-80 miles away, to save the day and restore and law and order. We know the formula: the three fall into a kind erotic relationship that strengthens their determination to protect each other, drawing others to their side.

But this time much of the homoerotic subtext of the previous two Hawks westerns is missing, and the relation of McNally and Cardona to Shasta transforms this film more clearly to a heterosexual story.

     While in the previous two films of Hawks' Western trilogy, Wayne was surrounded by weaker women and men, here McNally is himself a kind of agèd alcoholic, offering a round of drinks at every opportunity and demanding a swig of any liquor he can get. As the three spend the night in an old burial ground, McNally, sitting by himself in the cold, giggles in mysterious delight. Asked what he is so happy about, he answers: "I've had about the right number of drinks. And I'm warm, and I'm relaxed." Awakening the next morning to find Shasta by his side, McNally is startled. Shasta explains that she slept next to him because he was "comfortable." And it is clear that, if he is no longer a hero, he now represents a kind of irritable comfort, a safe place in a world of imminent dangers.

     The rest of the story hardly matters. Of course, they find graft and corruption facing them in Rio Lobo, as they are met with guns, imprisonment, and hate. A local bully, Ketcham has installed his man, "Blue Tom" Henricks as sheriff, and is trying to overtake the farms about. Tuscarora, Cordona's former Rebel partner, has been arrested on trumped-up charges. Visiting Ketchum's farm, the three overcome Ketcham, upon which Cordona reports that he is the second of the traitors. Forcing Ketcham to sign over the deeds of the stolen farms, McNally and his friends temporarily win the day. But, soon after, Cordona is taken by the bully's gang and an exchange, Ketchum for Cordona, is arranged. The local farmers join McNally and Delaney in the standoff, as Cordona dives to safety into a nearby river, and the evil gang is destroyed. Paralleling the plot of El Dorado, McNally, who has been shot in the leg, walks off using his rifle for a crutch, while Amelita (Lansing) runs forward to help him walk. 

      Few critics, with the exception of The New York Times' Roger Greenspun, appreciated the film. And Greenspun's faint praise, "the movie is close enough to greatness to be above everything else in the current season," evidently produced a flurry of angry letters. Despite Hawks' apparently lackadaisical attitude about his last film, the work is extremely amusing and was one of the biggest earning films of 1970.

             

Los Angeles, April 18, 2009

All three essays reprinted from Green Integer Blog (April 2009).

Tony Richardson | Tom Jones / 1963

bed to bed

by Douglas Messerli

 

John Osbourne (screenplay), Tony Richardson (director) Tom Jones / 1963

 

Although we often speak of the 1960s as if it were a coherent age of political and sexual openness and experimentation, having been there I can assure you that 1963, the year of Tony Richardson’s joyous testament to youthful debauchery, was not yet part of the liberated culture that followed it. As I have written elsewhere and reconfirmed by many studies about which I’ve also written, the early 1960s—at least in the US—was in many senses, particularly for gays and those who might soon after seek out open sexuality—a very conservative period. Although President Kennedy might have been living a quite a satyr-like life, Jackie sat with her pillbox hat in a room separate, perhaps whispering nice appreciations into Leonard Bernstein’s ear, and even, at times, enjoying the euphoria of drugs, but living in a world that no one might have perceived as “liberated.”  Life in the early 1960s for the vast majority of Americans was not what the later 1960s might offer up.

      How remarkable, accordingly, for the culture at large to encounter Richardson’s bawdy revelry, hidden behind its faux 18th century moral narrative dictums. Albert Finney, portraying the naughty boy antics of the Henry Fielding hero, literally giggling along with composer John Addison’s spritely harpsichord refrains, permitted nearly anyone without dour religious convictions to give themselves up to the sin of the flesh without actually having to admit it had anything at all to do with their own daily personal lives.

      No wonder the movie made millions and won over nearly any Britisher and American living through those days, winning several Academy Awards, including the best film of the year, while being described by popular journals such as Newsweek as “The best comedy ever made.”

       Finney portrayed the rapscallion Tom as the kind of figure who neither woman nor man could possibly resist—unless you were the foppish half-brother Blifil (David Warner), who uses his faked religiosity as a cover for his greedy desires. Even the well brought-up Sophie Western (played with an innocent lustiness by Susannah York)—who has been raised by her priggish aunt (Edith Evans) and her gout-suffering, hunt-loving, and womanizing father (Hugh Griffith)—could not abide Blifil, the supercilious man, promised to her for marriage. She chases, along with a pack of women, young and elderly, after the virile, handsome young Tom.

     That the usually anguished, working-class spokesman, John Osbourne was so brilliantly able to whip up a screenplay out of Fielding’s encyclopedia original satire, is truly amazing—akin to the possibility that American playwright Arthur Miller might have been able to create a comic masterpiece, of which that sincerely-serious writer was clearly incapable.

     And just as startling is that the director of works like Look Back in Anger, A Taste of Honey, Luther, and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner could possibly stir up the delicious pot of Keystone Comedy antics and the gluttonous sexual orgies of this film. Those who worked with him, including cinematographer Walter Lassally, report that Richardson, out of personal dissatisfaction with the results, almost boiled the frothiness of this work away to a stale stew. Fortunately, finances and temporal limitations prevented his further stirring.

      The accidental results are absolutely memorable. But it was probably the fact that Richardson was himself a closeted bisexual who ultimately died of AIDS that allowed him to create of film with so much sexual promiscuity and freedom. If Tom is utterly heterosexual in the movie, he represents the notorious sexual appetites of gay men of the next couple of decades. And throughout the film, men who live their lives fully also love Tom. Certainly, at age 16 I fell in love with Tom and the actor who played, without fully realizing why or what that meant. It is only the sexual prude Blifil, clearly a version of a closeted gay man, and his kind who cannot abide Tom, probably because there is no possibility that the handsome hero might pay any sexual attention to them. Despite his obsession with Tom, Blifil, moreover, seems more interested in money and position than in any kind of sex.

     

      No one who has seen it can forget the intense flash of Mrs. Waters (Joyce Redman)—the hero’s possible mother—and Tom’s eyes as they fathom the full feast of birds, raw meat, and human flesh that together they ecstatically face across the table from one another: no sexual act could possibly match the fulfillment of those eyes, mouths, and jaws consuming everything in sight. Lust has never before or since been so perfectly embodied.

       The mad chase of Squire Western and nearly everyone else of good will in this cinematic fiction to save Tom from his much deservèd swing from the gallows is the glorious summation of hundreds of cliff-hanging endings of early cinema serials.

      For years after, in my literature classes, I used this exuberant film to demonstrate narrative strategies that were employed only by the most experimental of 20th century fiction writers, including the intrusive narrations, the direct address of characters to the reader/viewer, and the authorial interventions that so delighted 18th century readers—until, one day, I realized that most of my students were not even born when this popular film transformed its audiences.

      Along with the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Richardson’s film represented a part of the British cultural revolution that soon would change everything in American society, punching American artists and audiences to transform the arts on an even larger scale. If Richardson, as his later films reiterate, was hardly a cinematic visionary, in 1963 he was able to create a work that suggested he might possibly be one, and helped to extend what the French New Wave filmmakers had already intimated.

     Two years later Godard would offer up, in Pierrot le Fou, the same sort of self-conscious and self-destructive fool that Tom Jones was in Richardson’s and Osbourne’s droll cinematic representation—but, even then, without Finney’s sexual exuberance, Godard’s hero had no solution but finally to completely destroy himself. Only in Penn’s 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, did we discover characters as openly able to flaunt social and sexual conventions as did Fielding’s handsome foundling—yet they too were necessarily destroyed by the surrounding society.

     By that time, however, everything, everywhere had already changed, and the society of the late 1960s began realize that death was not a necessary result of sexual and political transgression; yet, perhaps, given the 1970s and 1980s struggles with AIDS and other versions of social and sexual scourges, that recognition came too late.

     Coming as it did before we even expected it and could assimilate its radical message, Tom Jones should be perceived as a kind of self-enchanted trumpet charge into a new generation, a work that had no idea where he was going, but gracefully went there nonetheless. If Rick and Elsa will always have Paris, I and millions of others of my generation, will always have the light-tripping antics of night-shirted Tom, merrily traipsing off in utter confusion from bed to bed.

 

Los Angeles, December 12, 2011

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2011).

Debadrita Bose | The Clarinets / 2017

licorice

by Douglas Messerli

 

Debadrita Bose (screenplay and director) The Clarinets / 2017 [23 minutes]

 

Anil (Sukrit) has come to the city to buy a material a gown and other gifts for the bride back in his small rural village whom he will soon marry. We later discover that he’s not yet seen his bride, but his parents, wanting him to marry, have arranged the wedding and is determined not to disappoint them.

     This beautiful Indian film, directed by Debadrita Bose, gets underway, however, as Anil has missed the bus back, and is now waiting, presumably through the night, for the next bus to arrive in the morning.

      Suddenly, a young man asks him for a match, immediately striking up a conversation, beginning with a query of why Anil is sitting there so late at night. The boy explains his situation and almost immediately the newcomer claims he knows of place where he can sleep.

      Anil demurs, but the other insists that it’s near, and that he, himself, often spends the night there. Anil is so unsure of the situation, but the other man, named Mobile (Dodo) we are soon told, is so friendly that he convinces him to join him.

    Almost immediately as the two enter the building we realize something is amiss, with several individuals camped out on the steps that lead up the rooms. Once they reach the second floor, Mobile immediately takes him into a room where several transsexuals and some gay men are gathered, all quickly turning their attention to Anil, grabbing up the package with the beautiful dress material and teasing the young man for having brought them such a lavish present. A couple attempt to give him kisses, but he pulls back, demanding back his passage, Mobile calming down the situation as he pulls the dress material back and hands it to Anil, moving him off into another space.

     But Anil now cowers on the floor, realizing that Mobile has taken him to what is basically a house of gay prostitution, and insists on knowing why his new friend has taken him there knowing that he was straight and soon to be married.

   Mobile attempts to calm him down and relax him, bringing him a small plate of food and explaining that he comes there regularly and they don’t touch him, although he doesn’t deny that he is also gay. In fact, as Anil finally begins to eat and seems more relaxed, he asks if the boy has truly been shocked by the experience.

       Anil admits that, even in the small village where he lives he knows that some men love other men; but it is not for him. Nonetheless, when Anil relaxes a bit further, Mobile does attempt to kiss him, Anil once more cowering like a hurt bird, his hands covering his face as if they were wings. Mobile apologizes.

       He explains that he too might some day like to get married—but not a woman. And once more he reports that he regularly comes here without being sexually solicited and attacked. I do what I want, he concludes. But soon he reports that every night he sleeps in this place and during the day goes to work, returning here as if it were his home. It is clear that this man is lonely and has sought out Anil for the possibility of sex. Once more he assures Anil that he won’t touch him and that he can leave in the morning, at least being able to sleep inside. “When we grew he moved to some other place.”

      Throughout this short film there is a great deal of silence and even cessation of movement, and these two, silence and stillness now follow as Anil attempts to assimilate one has happened to him. Finally, he suggests that Mobile reminds him in his smile of a young boy with who you used to bicycle and swim together with in his youth.

     Once again he grows silent and Mobile basically turns from him. But gradually he moves his had up to Mobile’s face, touching it as if he were a blind man exploring the features of his new acquaintance. Before long his touches become something closer to strokes, and finally he moves in for a kiss. But at that moment, Mobile backs away explaining that he has lied to him, that his real name is Rafiq. He explains that it’s bad enough to be a faggot, but to be Muslim as well….impossible. Everyone knows him as Mobile, and Anil is first to whom he has admitted his real name. The two now kiss deeply, as if the admission has opened a door between them and they are finally free to fully express their sexual desire and love.

    This film has begun with just the silence and stillness that I mention above, devoting 4.10 minutes to the central character’s awakening in bed, eventually pulling on his sweater, and gradually leaving the bed, moving to the next room where he takes out the beautiful pink material we later discover he plans to bring to his bride as he refolds it several times. As our eyes scan the rooms we eventually do spot the naked back of a man who remains in the bed.

       We now realize that that early scene was of Anil rising from his night with Mobile/Rafiq, that he is slowly readying himself to leave. We return to that scene with Anil sitting on the floor smoking a cigarette as Mobile rolls over in bed. Gradually Anil pulls together his packages, puts on his backpack and leaves the place.

       As he moves down the narrow alley way, Anil encounters one of the gay boys who asks: “Hey lover boy, did you sleep at all or did your Mobile make love through the whole night?”

        Anil moves on, finally reaching the street and arriving at the bus stop, now in the midst of a busy avenue. A bus drives by, but Anil makes no attempt to get on. Almost in slow motion, he turns around and begins walking back toward the house he has left where Mobile is still sleeping. We hear the tinkle of the small bells tied to the wedding material, as Mobile finally opens his eyes surely to see Anil having returned to him. Obviously, Anil has discovered his own sexuality in the night.

 

Los Angeles, February 21, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2024).

George Seaton | Miracle on 34th Street / 1947

born again

by Douglas Messerli

 

George Seaton (screenplay, based on a story by Valentine Davies and director) Miracle on 34th Street / 1947

 

I’ll begin by admitting that I absolutely enjoy George Seaton’s and Valentine Davies’ holiday fantasy, Miracle on 34th Street. I have probably watched this film every year of my adult life on Thanksgiving day or during the Christmas season, and I get delight just imagining that I might have been able witness the premiere of this film as a 6-month-old baby. 

    This year, watching it just before Thanksgiving dinner, however, I had a different, more contrarian view of the holiday chestnut, listed in the National Film Registry.

    Let me start by saying the obvious, a cliché spouted each year by thousands of religious Americans, particularly’ one imagines, by those who describe themselves as “born again:” the Christmas season has increasingly become commercialized and most Americans have lost the sense of the holiday’s true focus, the birth of Christ.

     Admittedly, I am not among those religious or “born again” Americans, but even I was amused when the Christmas shopping season, it was announced, would begin this year not on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving, but at midnight. A local radio station began 24-hour programming of Christmas carols (most of them centered on the holiday festivities instead of the child in Bethlehem) two weeks ago!

    Generally recognized as the emblem of that pagan, commercialized Christmas is Santa Claus, the jolly, fat Dutch gift-giving Sinterklaas. You remember him, the one about whom your parents lied, leading you on to believe that he was the source of all of those lovely Christmas presents beneath the tree until you grew old to appreciate the loving care they had been secretly showing you for all those years? As I have written elsewhere, I came to that realization, almost miraculously one morning, at a far younger age than most of my peers; it didn’t bother me one little bit that there wasn’t any Santa Claus and that my parents had been so nice to me for all those years. But my revelation of that fact to a school friend sent her off crying into her mother’s arms. I was told that I must never reveal the truth to anyone my age or younger. But even older children, I realized, might not like to hear my discovery.

     Seaton’s work, however, begins almost at the opposite end of the equation. The young girl at the center of this story, Susan Walker (Natalie Wood), has been told by her level-headed mother, Doris (Maureen O’Hara) that there is no Santa Claus, without any noticeable effect in the child’s demeanor. Mrs. Walker, who works at Macy’s, coordinating the all-important Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, is apparently a strong-headed and practical woman, who has, one imagines, tried to remove almost all fantasy and myth from her young daughter’s life. She has told that there are no giants, and the girl is discouraged from reading “fairy tales.” Obviously, the mother has been hurt by what she perceives as the fantasies of her married life. One wonders how she has dealt with Christian myths, including the child born in a stable. But fortunately, for the survival of the film, Seaton has skirted that issue and, indeed, all issues having to deal with the real season’s purpose.

    The film begins with a seemingly pernickety old man scolding a young window dresser for putting the reindeer in the wrong places in relation to his store’s depiction of Santa and sleigh. The man, Kris Kringle (the marvelous Edmund Gwenn), we soon discover, is very particular when it comes to all things about Santa. After all, he believes he is Kris Kringle, Santa. It is, as the doctor to the nursing home where Kris lives later assures us, a quite harmless delusion, one that only leads him to do good. But everything is soon made much more complicated when Kris accidentally encounters, during the early moments of the Macy parade, that the man hired to play Santa Claus—the traditional star of the event (even today, as I watched the parade, the bands, floats, balloons, and other theater and vaudeville events, the parade culminated with Santa’s arrival)—is absolutely soused! Reporting the man’s condition to Mrs. Walker, Kris seems a natural to replace the drunk Santa. After all, he even looks like a well-trimmed and tailored Santa. It is almost inevitable that Mrs. Walker should invite him to portray Santa, since, he declares, he has certainly had experience.

     Meanwhile, Doris’ daughter, Susan is watching the parade from a neighbor’s window, from what we might presume is a Central Park West apartment. Today we might worry about the fact that she is watching this with an adult male, Fred Gailey (John Payne)—although we have been reassured by the Walker’s maid that she has been keeping an eye on the girl—who occupies an apartment across the way. The Santa Claus, declares Susan, is quite convincing, far better than the one of the year before. Gailey is a bit troubled by her mature dismissal of Santa, as well as giants, but is not beyond encouraging her to invite him to dinner in the Walker home. Mr. Gailey may be a happy man (the old-fashioned meaning of “gay”), but he is represented as bit disturbing in his forward behavior. His “move” on the daughter, clearly is also a move on her somewhat cynical mother. Nonetheless, he is invited to dinner.

     Kris, meanwhile, not only looks the part of the perfect Santa, but is quickly hired by Macy’s to become their Department Store Santa. Kris is delighted to be able to return to his rightful place, and everyone seems happy with his “acting,” until it is discovered that he has been telling some parents to purchase their children’s gifts at competing stores—even Gimbels. The scene where Thelma Ritter (in one of her first film roles) stops to thank the floor manager for their unusual new policy, where they put the spirit of Christmas, so it appears, before their own financial gain, is one of the most delightful of the film.

   Such radical behavior is, expectedly, met with horror, until both the floor manager, Julian Shellhammer (Philip Tongue) and Mrs. Walker, summoned to Mr. Macy’s office, are surprised to discover that their boss loves the idea, realizing that it will result in even more gift-paying customers. In another assault on the Walker family, Gailey encourages Susan to wait in line to see Santa, before dropping her off to her mother’s office. The girl is skeptical, until she hears Kris speak and sing to a young Dutch orphan in her original language. Doris’s response is predictable: “Susan, I speak French, but that doesn’t make me Joan of Arc.”

     To back her up, Doris summons their Santa, encouraging him to tell Susan that he is not really Santa Claus, but when he insists that he is, she demands his file, wherein she discovers that he goes under the name of Kris Kringle and declares his birthplace as the North Pole. A visit to the store psychologist is ordered for Kris, who passes all the tests with great aplomb, yet raising the ire of the psychologist, Granville Sawyer (Porter Hall) who throughout the interview pulls at his eyebrows—a trait shared by his secretary—by suggesting that something may be problematic in his home life. In retaliation, Sawyer suggests that Kris may have a latent hostility that could break out at any time. A call to the doctor who heads the Long Island nursing home where Kris has been living brings reassurances from Dr. Pierce (James Seay), who also suggests it may be easier if Kris can find a place to stay nearer to the store in Manhattan. Before you can say Kris Kringle, Gailey has invited the old man to share his bedroom, further insinuating his being into the Walker’s life.

 

     As the old gent speaks to Susan, he is saddened to learn that she does not believe in his existence and that she has been spurned by her playmates for being unable to imagine herself as an animal. “But I am not an animal,” she declares, after which he patiently teaches her how to pretend to be a monkey. 

    It is clear that he has taken on the Walkers as a kind of test case:

 

                      …Christmas isn’t just a day, it’s a frame of mind…and that’s what’s

                      been changing. That’s why I’m glad I’m here, maybe I can do

                      something about it.

 

      Kris even repeats the sentiments I stated earlier in this essay, disparaging the commercialism of the holiday—a strange thing for that emblem of the commercial to do; but it is clear the director and writer want to both ways.

     Soon after Kris discovers that a beloved young janitor, Alfred (Alvin Greenman) has also been seeing the mean-spirited Sawyer, who suggests that Alfred has psychological problems simply for wanting to play Santa Claus at his neighborhood YMCA. Furious with the abuse of this good-hearted boy, Kris charges into Sawyer’s office, accusing him of malpractice and hitting him over the head with his cane. The violence Sawyer has predicted has, alas, become reality, and Kris is sent to Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital for evaluation, believing that Mrs. Walker has been behind the decision.

     Despairing of the lack of faith she has shown, Kris purposely fails the psychiatric examination, and is destined to be locked away. Almost everyone knows the rest of the story, how Gailey takes on Kris’s case, fighting to convince a disbelieving world and court that Kris Kringle is truly Santa Claus. Even Mrs. Walker and her daughter come round to support his cause.

      The case is miraculously won due, in part, to the political exigencies of the court. As the Pol Charles Halloran (William Frawley) puts it to Judge Henry X. Harper (Gene Lockhart):

 

                        All right, you go back and tell them that the New York State

                        Supreme Court rules there’s no Santa Claus. It’s all over the papers.

                        The kids read it and they don’t hang up their stockings. Now what

                        happens to all the toys that are supposed to be in those stockings.

                        Nobody buys them. The toy manufactures are going to like that; so

                        they have to lay off a lot of their employees, union employees. Now

                        you got the CIO and AF of L against you and they’re going to

                        adore you for it and they’re going to say it with votes. Oh, and the

                        department stores are going to love you too and the Christmas card

                        makers and the candy companies. Ho ho, Henry, you’re going to be

                        an awful popular fella. And what about the Salvation Army? Why,

                        they got a Santa Claus on every corner, and they’re taking a fortune.

 

     So much for Kringel’s dismay for the commercialism of Christmas! Perhaps no clearer statement of the relationship of the fat, jolly, fellow and money has ever been made. Harper’s children even hate their father for putting Santa Claus on trial, and Gailey calls the young son of District Attorney Thomas Mara to testify that his father has told him, assuredly, that there is a Santa Claus.

     Even more cynical are the US Postal employees, tired of all the unclaimed mail addressed to Santa Claus, who win the day for Gailey and Kris Kringel by forwarding dozens of sacks of letters to the courthouse, providing the Judge with an easy way out:

 

                         Uh, since the United States Government declares this man to be

                         Santa Claus, this court will not dispute it. Case dismissed.

 

     So, insists Seaton’s film, Santa Claus, despite all evidence to the contrary, is alive and well. Yet Seaton and the original author go even further, demanding of even the adult characters and viewers their utter belief in the commercial emblem. When asked what she might like for Christmas, Susan pulls out an advertisement for a suburban Long Island home. Even Kris Kringel is a bit stunned by her demand, when he suggests, “…Don’t you see, dear? Some children wish for things they couldn’t possibly use like real locomotives or B-29.s.” Her retort is the stubborn insistence of any spoiled consumer:

 

                     If you’re really Santa Claus, you can get it for me. And if you can’t,

                     you’re only a nice man with a white beard like mother said.

 

    The filmmakers hardly pause to take in the significance of what the child has just said, before Kris has sent the three traveling along a route that winds by the house of her dreams. Upon glimpsing it, Susan demands they stop and runs into the home as if she already owned it. How can Mr. Gailey and Mrs. Walker resist such a consumer dream, even if it means giving up their perfectly nice apartments, overlooking the parade route, and now probably worth millions of dollars? They will simply have to marry, move to the suburbs, and build up the little family with which they have begun. The discovery of Kris’s cane left near the fireplace convinces them—just as surely as a “born again” Christian’s zealous rediscovery of Christ—of Santa Claus’ existence, just as the audience is bathed with consumer assurances that this is, in fact, the perfect house.

     Perhaps never in the whole of Hollywood productions was there a more central pitching of consumer products. Even movies with thousands of “product placements” cannot match Nathalie Wood’s answer to Kris’ question of where she had found the lovely sweater she is wearing: “My mother got on sale it at Macy’s.”

     During an ad between events of this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Macy’s proudly quoted that line among other cinematic mentions of the august department store.

      As Susan chants to herself: “I believe…I believe…it’s silly, but I believe.”

 

Los Angeles, Thanksgiving 2011

Reprinted from American Cultural Treasures (November 2011).