Home Movies
These first few days of the new year evoke a conflict of emotions: excitement for the possibilities of the year upcoming counterpointing sadness for the holiday festivities just passed. This is also when just plain tiredness sets in, as we finally slow down from nonstop activity that began around Halloween and hasn't really relented until now. In northern climes, streets are as icy as the windowpanes we view them through. A walk outside is picturesque during a new snow, but whether we're headed on a wide-ranging safari for pictures of evergreens or no further than the corner for a bag of groceries, nothing beckons like home.
Wherever we live, from the snowiest winter wonderland to the sunniest stretch of the sun belt, there's a good chance we spend much of January indoors. There is much to do: decorations to pack away, pipes to wrap, photos to paste into scrapbooks. January is a time to reconnect not just with our goals and memories but with the home in which we nourish those. Yes, it is sad to bid farewell to the tree as it is sent for mulching. But, as that tree will replenish the earth from which it came, the space it leaves behind sparkles not just with reminiscence but with possibility. Perhaps a new lamp would look good in that space, after we give the floor a good waxing or the rug a deep cleaning. We dust all of the surfaces, rearranging tablescapes with eyes refreshed by seeing the space as if anew. It is time to change the bed linens, organize the papers in the home office, restock the pantry.
In our urban home, we take a long weekend to take down the holiday decorations and to set up housekeeping for the year. I start dinner early in the day. The promise of a big pan of lasagna or a big pot of beef stew motivates us. As card-carrying film buffs, we play movies to keep us pleasantly engaged as we work. With January's focus on the home, we often gravitate to films about this most important of places, so here is a list of some of our favorite home movies. Queue these up to keep you company through a hardworking weekend of getting ready for 2011, or to enjoy as your reward on those evenings when the work is done. While you're at it, pop some popcorn and raise a glass to both the promise of the new year and to the home that will shelter and center you as you live it.
HOME MOVIES
The ability of the fixer-upper to bring big-city sophisticates to their knees is a small but reliable staple of Hollywood moviemaking. The two prime achievements of this genre -- Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
and George Washington Slept Here -- are similar enough that, effectively, your only real choice is if you want your city-slickness provided by Cary Grant and Myrna Loy or Ann Sheridan and Jack Benny. (It's also informed by availability as George Washington is not currently available on DVD, though it is in TCM's library). In both films, New York City residents buy ramshackle houses outside the city, believing that the restoration of small-town properties cannot be that difficult to anyone who's gotten used to navigating both Macy's and Grand Central Terminal. These are gentle, sentimental comedies, whose theme of the importance of home is plundered for comedy by dealings with contractors, architects, bankers and new neighbors. Even against as formidable forces of nature as Loy and Sheridan, the leading ladies in these films are the homes themselves, which by the final credits are as much of a reward to the family of the audience as they are to the families onscreen. To some contemporary eyes, the flicks may seem hokey, and it must be said that some will find some characters racist. Even so, I dare anyone not to be moved by Myrna Loy's heartfelt speeches about the power of home, not to be charmed by Ann Sheridan's gunfire rattling of quips, or not to laugh at Cary Grant's charming befuddlement as he tries to figure out a "Zuz-Zuz water softener."
Tellingly, both Blandings and George Washington bracket World War II, a time when stories about home were as important to those fighting on the homefront as they were to those in the trenches. During the great war, home was culturally something to believe in and to fight for, and movies did their part to construct this vision of America. When the war ended, the focus shifted to homecoming. Many stories grew out of post-war America, from sentimental to avant-garde. None is more effective at exploring the effect of homecoming upon the greatest generation than The Best Years of Our Lives
. This war picture is consistently agreed by film scholars to be one of the signature films of the 1940s, for its poetic but honest portrait of soldiers returning to a hometown that is both resistant to change and encountering it, even as the soldiers realize that they have been forever changed themselves. Aside from such marquee names as Fredric March, Dana Andrews and, again, Myrna Loy, this film features real GI Harold Russell in a role that won him an Oscar. Oscar's oversight, however, was Myrna Loy. As she did in Blandings, Loy centers the film in her character's understanding of the importance of home. As her husband struggles with reacclimatizing to civilian life, including a very real portrait of incipient alcoholism, we see not just how strong she has to be during the homecoming but how strong she had to be to keep the home fires burning while the menfolk were at war.
A different kind of homefront is at the center of Christmas in Connecticut
. The winter holidays form the backdrop for this film about a writer of a popular column about domesticity who happens to have no experience with keeping house, preferring instead to focus her lifestyle on nights on the town and new fur coats. The perpetrator of this glamorous flim-flam is played by no less a master of that artform than Barbara Stanwyck -- she who also pulled fast ones on Henry Fonda (The Lady Eve), Gary Cooper (Ball of Fire) and Fred MacMurray (Double Indemnity), to name but a few. True to the spirit of a holiday film, this time Stanwyck's character has no larceny in her heart. She is a writer who happened upon a good gig but whose circumstances simultaneously up the ante and call her bluff. All of the elements of a lifestyle writer's life are here, albeit on loan: a beautifully appointed country home (that isn't hers), mouth-watering food both homey and fancy (that she can't prepare), caring for children (that aren't hers) -- the filmmakers even work in a cow and a spinning wheel. They also work in a winter sleigh ride, as Stanwyck finds herself literally carried away by GI Dennis Morgan. In being unmasked as a homebody who can't cook, sew, or clean, Stanwyck's character finds her true self as a spouse who is also a writer, and a writer who is also a spouse. And that's the kind of homekeeping whose charms are appreciated not just by the readers of the Urban Home Blog but by its writer.
Home is about nothing if not family, and the modernist concept of choosing your family is at the core of Home for the Holidays
. The situation of this wonderfully observed film is the annual pilgrimage home for Thanksgiving, but its impact transcends its situation. I suspect that anyone who grew up in the suburbs will recognize themselves and their relatives in this film. Holly Hunter plays the primary traveler, who journeys from her own urban home in Chicago to her childhood one in Baltimore, where she is confronted -- both anew and as expected -- with her birth family's oddities and frailties and strengths. Jodie Foster, as director rather than actress, has an unerring eye for telling details (the family home is a masterpiece of art direction, a row house anyone whose lived in the middle Atlantic will not only recognize but has spent the night in) and symbolic ones. In a showdown scene between Hunter and Cynthia Stephenson as her uptight sister, a freshly laundered dress and an empty hanger symbolize the sisters, and the scene concludes with compassion for the empty areas of both lives and appreciation for the full areas. When Robert Downey Junior as Hunter's brother gets a Thanksgiving Day call from his husband in Boston, someone in the background of their flat hollers "come back to your real family." It is to the film's credit that, while this character has a family of choice, the film doesn't demonize the family of origin. Home for the Holidays presents this group of relatives with compassion and humor and, yes, sentiment. As Hunter, ticket in hand, walks down the airway for the trip back to Chicago, she is both a grown woman and a little girl. Those contradictions -- of age, of family, of home --have rarely been more skillfully intertwined, and are especially resonant for the generation that grew up on Sesame Street rather than Main Street.
Wherever we live, from the snowiest winter wonderland to the sunniest stretch of the sun belt, there's a good chance we spend much of January indoors. There is much to do: decorations to pack away, pipes to wrap, photos to paste into scrapbooks. January is a time to reconnect not just with our goals and memories but with the home in which we nourish those. Yes, it is sad to bid farewell to the tree as it is sent for mulching. But, as that tree will replenish the earth from which it came, the space it leaves behind sparkles not just with reminiscence but with possibility. Perhaps a new lamp would look good in that space, after we give the floor a good waxing or the rug a deep cleaning. We dust all of the surfaces, rearranging tablescapes with eyes refreshed by seeing the space as if anew. It is time to change the bed linens, organize the papers in the home office, restock the pantry.
In our urban home, we take a long weekend to take down the holiday decorations and to set up housekeeping for the year. I start dinner early in the day. The promise of a big pan of lasagna or a big pot of beef stew motivates us. As card-carrying film buffs, we play movies to keep us pleasantly engaged as we work. With January's focus on the home, we often gravitate to films about this most important of places, so here is a list of some of our favorite home movies. Queue these up to keep you company through a hardworking weekend of getting ready for 2011, or to enjoy as your reward on those evenings when the work is done. While you're at it, pop some popcorn and raise a glass to both the promise of the new year and to the home that will shelter and center you as you live it.
HOME MOVIES
The ability of the fixer-upper to bring big-city sophisticates to their knees is a small but reliable staple of Hollywood moviemaking. The two prime achievements of this genre -- Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
and George Washington Slept Here -- are similar enough that, effectively, your only real choice is if you want your city-slickness provided by Cary Grant and Myrna Loy or Ann Sheridan and Jack Benny. (It's also informed by availability as George Washington is not currently available on DVD, though it is in TCM's library). In both films, New York City residents buy ramshackle houses outside the city, believing that the restoration of small-town properties cannot be that difficult to anyone who's gotten used to navigating both Macy's and Grand Central Terminal. These are gentle, sentimental comedies, whose theme of the importance of home is plundered for comedy by dealings with contractors, architects, bankers and new neighbors. Even against as formidable forces of nature as Loy and Sheridan, the leading ladies in these films are the homes themselves, which by the final credits are as much of a reward to the family of the audience as they are to the families onscreen. To some contemporary eyes, the flicks may seem hokey, and it must be said that some will find some characters racist. Even so, I dare anyone not to be moved by Myrna Loy's heartfelt speeches about the power of home, not to be charmed by Ann Sheridan's gunfire rattling of quips, or not to laugh at Cary Grant's charming befuddlement as he tries to figure out a "Zuz-Zuz water softener."Tellingly, both Blandings and George Washington bracket World War II, a time when stories about home were as important to those fighting on the homefront as they were to those in the trenches. During the great war, home was culturally something to believe in and to fight for, and movies did their part to construct this vision of America. When the war ended, the focus shifted to homecoming. Many stories grew out of post-war America, from sentimental to avant-garde. None is more effective at exploring the effect of homecoming upon the greatest generation than The Best Years of Our Lives
. This war picture is consistently agreed by film scholars to be one of the signature films of the 1940s, for its poetic but honest portrait of soldiers returning to a hometown that is both resistant to change and encountering it, even as the soldiers realize that they have been forever changed themselves. Aside from such marquee names as Fredric March, Dana Andrews and, again, Myrna Loy, this film features real GI Harold Russell in a role that won him an Oscar. Oscar's oversight, however, was Myrna Loy. As she did in Blandings, Loy centers the film in her character's understanding of the importance of home. As her husband struggles with reacclimatizing to civilian life, including a very real portrait of incipient alcoholism, we see not just how strong she has to be during the homecoming but how strong she had to be to keep the home fires burning while the menfolk were at war.A different kind of homefront is at the center of Christmas in Connecticut
. The winter holidays form the backdrop for this film about a writer of a popular column about domesticity who happens to have no experience with keeping house, preferring instead to focus her lifestyle on nights on the town and new fur coats. The perpetrator of this glamorous flim-flam is played by no less a master of that artform than Barbara Stanwyck -- she who also pulled fast ones on Henry Fonda (The Lady Eve), Gary Cooper (Ball of Fire) and Fred MacMurray (Double Indemnity), to name but a few. True to the spirit of a holiday film, this time Stanwyck's character has no larceny in her heart. She is a writer who happened upon a good gig but whose circumstances simultaneously up the ante and call her bluff. All of the elements of a lifestyle writer's life are here, albeit on loan: a beautifully appointed country home (that isn't hers), mouth-watering food both homey and fancy (that she can't prepare), caring for children (that aren't hers) -- the filmmakers even work in a cow and a spinning wheel. They also work in a winter sleigh ride, as Stanwyck finds herself literally carried away by GI Dennis Morgan. In being unmasked as a homebody who can't cook, sew, or clean, Stanwyck's character finds her true self as a spouse who is also a writer, and a writer who is also a spouse. And that's the kind of homekeeping whose charms are appreciated not just by the readers of the Urban Home Blog but by its writer.Home is about nothing if not family, and the modernist concept of choosing your family is at the core of Home for the Holidays
. The situation of this wonderfully observed film is the annual pilgrimage home for Thanksgiving, but its impact transcends its situation. I suspect that anyone who grew up in the suburbs will recognize themselves and their relatives in this film. Holly Hunter plays the primary traveler, who journeys from her own urban home in Chicago to her childhood one in Baltimore, where she is confronted -- both anew and as expected -- with her birth family's oddities and frailties and strengths. Jodie Foster, as director rather than actress, has an unerring eye for telling details (the family home is a masterpiece of art direction, a row house anyone whose lived in the middle Atlantic will not only recognize but has spent the night in) and symbolic ones. In a showdown scene between Hunter and Cynthia Stephenson as her uptight sister, a freshly laundered dress and an empty hanger symbolize the sisters, and the scene concludes with compassion for the empty areas of both lives and appreciation for the full areas. When Robert Downey Junior as Hunter's brother gets a Thanksgiving Day call from his husband in Boston, someone in the background of their flat hollers "come back to your real family." It is to the film's credit that, while this character has a family of choice, the film doesn't demonize the family of origin. Home for the Holidays presents this group of relatives with compassion and humor and, yes, sentiment. As Hunter, ticket in hand, walks down the airway for the trip back to Chicago, she is both a grown woman and a little girl. Those contradictions -- of age, of family, of home --have rarely been more skillfully intertwined, and are especially resonant for the generation that grew up on Sesame Street rather than Main Street.
Comments
Post a Comment