Top 5 Christmas Films from Dr Kirsty Sinclair Dootson

As a film scholar, I spend a lot of time telling students that we’re not in the business of ranking or evaluating films—that it is not our job, or place, to give films one or five stars, to say what’s “hot” or “not”. So when I was asked to rank my top five Christmas movies…well, I obviously jumped at the chance.

1. To Live and Die in LA (Friedkin,1985)

If like me all you want for Christmas is a shirtless Willem Dafoe, then like me To Live and Die in LA must be one of your favourite Christmas movies. Although this crime-thriller is set in LA over the holiday, there’s scarcely any sight of tinsel in tinsel town, and Christmas maybe only gets mentioned once or twice. But honestly, who cares about all that festive nonsense when you’ve got Dafoe counterfeiting bank notes (in nothing but a robe!) and two (corrupt!) cops trying to catch him. To say this movie is HOT isn’t just a comment on the LA winter weather. But If hot isn’t your thing (you weirdo), the film has other appeals, like Hollywood’s most exhilarating car-chase, when our dirty cops drive THE WRONG WAY down an LA highway REALLY FAST! If Christmas isn’t stressful enough, then this will pump a little extra adrenalin around your system (but make sure you’ve got that pause button ready for those Dafoe scenes too.)

2. The Apartment (Wilder, 1960)

I’ve always found it strange how many Christmas films feature suicide attempts, and I’ve never been a fan of It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946), but The Apartment strikes just the right balance between tragedy and comedy for me. Jack Lemmon plays Bud Baxter, a New York City office worker whose bachelor-pad doubles as the love-nest for his colleagues’ extra-marital affairs. But Baxter sours on this arrangement when he discovers his married boss (Fred MacMurray) is using the apartment to woo his secret office crush, the elevator girl Fran (played by the divine Shirley MacLaine). Realising he’ll never leave his wife, Fran tries (unsuccessfully, phew!) to take an overdose in the apartment, meaning she and Baxter spend the Christmas holidays together as she recovers (MERRY CHRISTMAS!) What makes this a great Christmas movie is that it’s a film about the misdirection of desire, about wanting all the wrong things, and how the thing you crave the most could ultimately destroy you—and at the end of the day—isn’t that what Christmas is really all about? The film’s iconic last line, “shut up and deal” is also useful to have on hand for fractious family board games over the holiday.

3. Christmas in Connecticut (Godfrey, 1945)

I spent a few Christmases in Connecticut during graduate school but none were ever as fun as this. Here, Barbara Stanwyck (my all-time favourite comic actress who can jerk a pretty good tear too), plays Elizabeth Lane, a fabulously single journalist in New York City. She keeps herself in fur coats by writing a spurious food column about family life on her fictional Connecticut farm—but when her editor insists on bringing a handsome navy vet to join her for a homey Christmas in the country—the jig is about the be up! What I love about this movie is that it gives you all the tropes of a classical Hollywood Christmas (the beautifully trimmed tree, the perfectly roasted turkey) while sending the whole thing up as a hugely labour-intensive production that every American housewife is (unrealistically) expected to put on. I adore that even though Lane hates cooking, housework, and babies—with a little help from her Hungarian Chef-cum-uncle Felix—she still gets what she wants for Christmas—a hunk in a navy uniform. As Felix would say “Hunky Dunky!”

4. Ghost Stories for Christmas (Volumes 1&2)

This isn’t technically one movie but an excellent BFI box-set comprising adaptations of M.R. James Ghost stories made for Christmas broadcasts on British television in the 1970s. My favourite is still Whistle and I'll Come to You (1968), about a stuffy English academic (hard to identify with of course), who takes a holiday on the coast and uncovers a mysterious artefact while poking about at the beach. The film’s special effects amount to little more than a sheet, a whistle, and a slow-motion dream sequence, but it still scares the heck out of me every time I watch it. It’s also under an hour long so you can make it a Christmas horror double-bill with . . .

5. Black Christmas (Clark, 1974)

I’ve really plumbed the absolute depths of Christmas horror films (google “Elves” if you want to see how low I’ve stooped), but Black Christmas is one I’ve returned to again and again. It’s the ultimate sorority slasher‚ with sass galore from our sorority girls, who are being picked off one-by-one by a faceless killer as they start to head home for the holidays. It’s got everything you want from a Christmas movie: twinkling lights, snow, carols, obscene phone calls, asphyxiation, and buckets of blood. I recently realised that the man I’ve chosen for my life partner very closely resembles the head of the homicide squad in this film (played by the irrepressibly handsome John Saxon), but maybe that’s between me and my therapist? MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Links 

• Find out more about Kirsty Sinclair Dootson 
• Discover film studies at UCL