Wrinkly Film Club* 14/12/17: Miracle on 34th Street
In a special festive film club, we watched the 1947 version
of Miracle on 34th Street written
and directed by George Seaton and starring Maureen O’Hara and John Payne. To my
surprise, the DVD included a colourized version, which we collectively decided
to have a go with. As vision is an issue for many residents, colour is easier
for them than black and white film. Being a joyful story about the spirit of
Christmas, the colour (first added in the 1980s) was full of vibrant hues of
red, green and gold, and rarely was its addition discernible.
Six residents attended, and we were joined by two relatives.
I was surprised that not only had no one seen this version before, but they
also hadn’t heard of the story at all. It has experienced quite a few
incarnations in theatre, radio, television, novelization and film since the
original story was written by Valentine Davies. The 1994 remake was fairly
popular and I remember it being released when I was 10, but I also must
remember as a life-long cinephile to recalibrate to the experiences of the general
non-cinema-going public. Plus, the point has been to introduce the residents to
films and different stories they would like but may never have come across
before, and it feels good when that works out, and even better when I have a
few things to say about them!
Everyone enjoyed the film very much. Well, the lady whose
relatives were there says little – and little positive at that – so believe me
when I say I was delighted when I asked her what she thought, and she replied
that it wasn’t too bad. I said I’d take that as a win. Her visitor laughed and
said it was the most positive response I could hope for. Others expressed that
they thoroughly enjoyed it and found it funny and cheering.
The film opens as Doris Walker (O’Hara) oversees the Macy’s
department store Thanksgiving Day parade which culminates in Santa Claus’s
arrival at the store. However, their Santa Claus (Percy Helton) is drunk and
passes out. An elderly passersby who stopped to berate him is asked by Doris to
replace him, and Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) – who claims to be the real Santa
Claus – gets the job. While there are concerns about Kris’s sanity, his honesty
and warm-heartedness secure loyalty from customers.
Meanwhile, it becomes apparent that Doris is the divorced mother
of young Susan (Natalie Wood) who has befriended their neighbour, the attorney Fred
Gailey (Payne), who has deep affections for the Walkers but wishes they were less serious. He soon enlists
Kringle’s help in igniting imagination and blind faith in Susan who has been
taught by her mother to be truthful and sceptical, which in the story are
synonymous with seriousness. In the process, Doris’s emotional armour against
further heartbreak dissolves, and she gives in to loving Fred and believing in
Kris.
While the film is funny with sharp, harmless humour, there
are of course issues that a film of this nature – and a film made in 1947 –
raises. However, in comparing it with the 1994 remake, I find the 1947 version to
be less problematic. 1990s single working mother Dorey Walker (Elizabeth
Perkins) seems to rely on free childcare from her neighbour Bryan Bedford (Dylan
McDermott) and the elderly Kris Kringle (Richard Attenborough) who she's just met and thinks is delusional while her 1940s counterpart has hired help in Cleo (Theresa Harris).
Although minimal, it is refreshing to see a person of colour fully present in
the ’40s film and with expository lines, particularly when – if memory serves –
the remake presents a white-washed New York City and an erasure of anyone
working in menial or subservient roles. Moreover, the men in both films spend
much time alone with six-year-old Susan, but in Cleo’s first appearance she has
a line of sight through the Walkers’ and Fred’s apartment windows via which she
has keeps an eye on Susan watching the parade from Fred’s better view. She is
also present and nearby when Kris speaks with Susan in her bedroom. While the
subtle layers of surveillance in the earlier film might suggest post-war social
paranoia, it also demonstrates some characters’ concerns for the safety and
wellbeing of others, which to my recollection the remake does not, or at least
not to the same extent.
 |
| Cleo's point of view from the Walkers' apartment into Fred's |
As Kris spends time with Susan, he convinces her that myths
and legends have their place, as do stories and imagination. And of course,
they do, but the danger is conflating these with truth and reality. Susan seems
to appreciate this distinction and shows no interest in anything other than
fact and truth. Fred and Kris join forces to persuade her otherwise. Meanwhile,
company psychologist Granville Sawyer (Porter Hall) claims that Kris harbours ‘latent
maniacal tendencies’. As aspects of his life and character emerge, it is likely
that he is projecting his own malcontent onto Kris. And yet, Kris is persistent
and prepared to go to great lengths to persuade rather than prove to Susan that
he is who he says he is, and imposes his help on Doris and Susan whom he sees condescendingly
as ‘two lost souls’. What really is so wrong with preferring facts to play, or
honesty to make-believe? Disruption of gender normativity is what.
In both films, the ultimate goals are to assure faith in the
unquestioned unknowable – the violent defence of which is apparently sanctioned
– and to restore the hetero-patriarchal middle class normative order by reinstating
the ‘natural’ family unit. Having blind faith and imagination is affirmed as
what’s best for a girl’s wellbeing, at least until she is old enough to herself
fulfil motherly/wifely duties. The ’94 version conflates these with religion.
What wins the day in ’47 is the authority of the US postal service, whereas in ’94
it is the blind faith in the Christian god appearing on US currency that dispels
the court case – a trial held after Kringle commits assault but in both cases tenuously
becomes concerned with proving/disproving the existence of Santa Claus.
When I first saw the remake, I was old enough to not be
shocked by mild violence, but the ease with which a man supposedly the
embodiment of peace, kindness, generosity and goodwill could be provoked to strike
someone never sat right with me. The same goes for the 1947 version; however,
it came quite soon after a war in which the USA helped the allied forces combat
fascism and injustice, so perhaps in that sense, Gwenn’s Kris – and both movie
versions were played by Englishmen – can be tenuously excused by contextual
moral standards. Importantly, the ’47 Kris was standing up for the young, kind and
impressionable Alfred (Alvin Greenman) who was being bullied by Sawyer, while the
’94 Kris defends himself and his/Santa’s existence to
his provocateur, the drunk Santa he replaced (Jack McGee) now working for a
rival store.
Which brings me on to the solid foundation of capitalism on
which these systems are laid. When against company policy Kris advises parents
on where to find the gifts the children want instead of marketing what needs to
sell, it works in Macy’s favour, and a sort of friendly rivalry emerges between
the store and its biggest rival, Gimbels, who copy the idea. The stores set
aside differences to share publicity and are rewarded for their profit-motivated
goodwill with trade and happy customers. The ’94 approach is cynical, perhaps reflecting
the post-80s ‘greed-is-good’ philosophy. ’47 Kris is committed to a mental
institution after hitting Sawyer with his cane for insisting that Alfred’s kindness
is an indicator of mental instability. This act is a catalyst for a personal vendetta
against Kris that Sawyer regrets too late when it works to his own detriment.
However, in ’94 the provocation is an act of personal revenge incited by associates
of the Cole’s store’s biggest rivals, Shopper’s Express, to damage the sales
and lasting reputation of Cole’s to improve their own. Even still, it is a bit
rich to hear ’47 Kris complain about Christmas’s commercialization when Santa
personifies it and ensures that the festive efforts of the primary givers of
childcare go unappreciated for years.
World War II is never referred to directly in ’47, but instead
alluded to through looks and loaded silences after half-uttered introductions.
For example, the scene in which Kris communicates in sign language with a deaf
girl in ’94 was originally with a non-English speaking Dutch adopted orphan.
Reading between the lines, she is likely her family's sole survivor of the
Nazi-occupied Netherlands. I could speculate further, but the purpose of this
encounter is Susan witnessing Kris conversing in the first language of a
displaced and traumatized child, which suggests to her the possibility that he
may just be Jolly One.
Post-war renewal is perhaps why politics is mentioned
overtly in ’47. Judge Henry X. Harper (Gene Lockhart) worries about the trial’s
impact on his re-election and mentions that he is a democrat while District
Attorney Thomas Mara (Jerome Cowan) who presents the prosecution case is a
republican. This indicates Judge Harper’s leftist, liberal and perhaps socialist
leanings. When he is buried in mail addressed to Santa Claus delivered to the
courthouse by the truck-full, he accepts the argument that if the mail service believes
Kris to be Santa, then he must be. This puts Harper in a win-win situation with
children and voters alike by declaring Santa to be real and showing tremendous
faith in the robustness of a federal system.
To edge into review territory, the intricacy of the
original story in the 1947 Miracle on 34th
Street is partly why it won many awards and has been preserved by the
Academy Film Archive while the 1994 remake may well fade in time. It is also
much less cynical, and has much more potential to cause hearty laughter in the young and old alike.
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