More ways I can help you… (part 4)

Do you ever find yourself sitting down with the same group of people every year to watch the same thing?

Before streaming services, families would spend time together watching holiday films on TV. Even if they’ve never actually watched them, they know all about the plot, the characters, the and the dialogs.

This is something that happens in many countries… the need to have something the entire family can do together seems to be universal.

But the films each culture chooses to watch are a wonderful window onto the way the people tend to see life.

United States favorites

In the US, the traditional films would be “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Miracle on 34th Street”. These films are shown throughout the holiday season every year.

In the first film, George is thinking of committing suicide on Dec 24th. He feels his life has been a failure. An apprentice angel spends the film showing him that his life has touched many others for the better.

In the second film, Santa Claus comes to New York, where he tries to get a hard-headed woman and her daughter to believe in him.

UK Favorites

In the UK, there isn’t so much of a tradition of a single film that everyone watched. There are many Christmas specials of favorite series. Yet "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens is seen on TV, in plays, read aloud, and is well known by everyone. There are so many versions out there to choose from!

In case you don’t know the basic plot, a horrible, miserly old man is visited by the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future, and is shown the error of his ways. He becomes a delight to be with from then on.

French Favorites

In France, people tend to prefer slapstick comedies for Christmas. The film everyone there knows by heart is “Santa Claus is a Stinker (Le Père Noel est une ordure).” They can repeat the dialogs the way those of us from the US and the UK repeat Monty Python. Two staff members at a telephone hotline for depressed people are stuck on the Christmas Eve shift. They are visited by a series of callers, each with their own problems and each leading to a new slapstick catastrophe. The cast is very well known for other comedies.

The other Christmas film they love in France is “Home Alone.” This is the well-known American film where Kevin is accidentally left at home by his family over Christmas. He foils some thieves using whatever he has at hand to create ever-more over-the-top comedy.

The Russian Favorite

In Russia, since Soviet times, the tradition has been to watch “Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!” for New Year. It’s the story of a man who gets drunk in the bathhouse with his best friends on New Year’s Eve (see the photo above). The drunken group accidentally sends him to Leningrad. He lands while still drunk, gets a taxi to his address, and falls asleep in his apartment – in the wrong city! The confusion leads to true love. People quote from the film often, and the songs are all extremely well known.

Travel through film

If you were never able to go to the Soviet Union, or haven’t gone yet to Russia, and want to see how people live, this is not a bad place to start. There are familiar scenes with people sitting in the kitchen and talking, the bathhouse, the apartment buildings…

The same for France - while this is a slapstick comedy, you can see how people live, work, and deal with catastrophes.

I find that films are a great window on how people live, on their culture, and the ways they see themselves. I hope you discover something new here!

If you liked this article, please connect with me on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliapoger/ - and we can continue the conversation!

Trailers

Here are links to the trailers for:

-It’s a Wonderful Life:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLR3gZrU2Xo

-Miracle on 34th Street (1994 version):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leDD6Y-Nyqg

-A Christmas Carol:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVObHkzoFPg

-Home Alone:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEDaVHmw7r4

-Santa Claus is a Stinker (Le Père Noel est une ordure):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXA6y0lWvZg

-The Irony of Fate (Ирония судьбы): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGBxVkmKNHg

and its animated beginning, which shows why the entire rest of the story happens:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHdFd2RKRSI