3 Godfathers (1948)
John Ford and John Wayne don’t precisely scream Christmas cheer, however that’s precisely what we get with 3 Godfathers, primarily based on the brief story by Peter B. Kyne. 3 Godfathers takes the Biblical story of the three wisemen and units it within the Previous West, with Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz, and Harry Carey Jr. as a trio of rustlers who maintain an orphaned toddler. Ford and Wayne at all times make film magic collectively, and the playfulness of the story lightens their typically mythic strategy.
Ikiru (1952)
Like 3 Godfathers, Ikiru doesn’t explicitly point out Christmas. Moreover, it doesn’t even draw inspiration from a Christmas story. As an alternative, this mild drama from the legendary Akira Kurosawa stars Takashi Shimura as a authorities beaucrat Kanji Watanabe, who learns that he’s dying of most cancers. Along with his restricted time left, Watanabe devotes himself to getting town to assemble a playground for kids, hoping to go away some kind of legacy. Ikiru lacks jingle bells and tinsel, however when Watanabe sits on a swing and the snow begins to fall, you’ll see why the film is typically known as the Japanese It’s a Great Life.
Stalag 17 (1953)
Many nice filmmakers get talked about on this listing, however just one has the distinction of getting two motion pictures make the lower. The warfare movie Stalag 17 comes from author and director Billy Wilder, and stars William Holden and Don Taylor as American airmen held in a German camp overseen by a artful warden (Otto Preminger). Lest the concept of Christmas and a World Battle call to mind the Christmas truce, be assured that Wilder has no such optimism right here. Stalag 17 offers with the People turning on each other as they seek for an informant of their midst, enjoying extra like The Factor than any episode of Hogan’s Heroes.
We’re No Angels (1955)
Humphrey Bogart lastly makes the listing in We’re No Angels, not as a non-public detective, however as (basically) one of many Three Stooges. Bogart stars alongside Aldo Ray and Peter Ustinov on this farce about escaped prisoners in colonial French Guiana. Initially desiring to lie low, the trio quickly finds themselves serving to the struggling townspeople, discovering their higher natures within the course of. The thought of criminals, two of whom are murderers, brightening the lives of colonizers is fairly icky if you concentrate on it, however director Michael Curtiz and the three stars issues gentle, particularly as Christmas decorations start to seem round its island setting.
All That Heaven Permits (1955)
The vast majority of Douglas Sirk’s triumphant melodrama All That Heaven Permits doesn’t, in reality, happen throughout Christmas. However some key scenes actually do contain the vacation, and the wonderful technocolor and Frank Skinner’s swooning rating makes the entire thing really feel of the season, as does its romantic plot. Jane Wyman performs Cary Scott, a New England blue-blood widow who thought love was behind her when she meets Ron Kirby, a charismatic however blue-collar and far youthful groundskeeper performed by Rock Hudson. The 2 defy social requirements and embrace their love, which makes All That Heaven Permits sound like a Hallmark film, however none of these match the lushness of this basic.
Desk Set (1957)
The truest successor to Powell and Loy’s Nick and Nora Charles got here within the type of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, the facility couple of ’50s screwball comedy. Within the Desk Set, directed by Walter Lang and written by Phoebe Ephron and Henry Ephron, Tracy performs an inventor who creates a pc to do analysis extra effectively than any human. That declare is put to the check when he tries to put in the machine in a library run by a researcher performed by Hepburn. As the 2 attempt to show one another incorrect, they begin to fall in love—which is strictly the kind of plot that Phoebe and Henry Ephron’s daughter Nora would good later, in motion pictures similar to When Harry Met Sally… and You’ve Received Mail.
