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Since the Christmas weekend begins tomorrow, this week's «Film Friday» is going to be a little bit different than usual. Instead of telling you about only one Christmas film, which was my original plan, I thought I would compile all the Christmas-y films I have written about since starting this blog. Most of them are part of a « 12 Days of Christmas Films » feature I did last December. If you are looking for a film to watch over the holidays, I think these are some good choices. Let's begin with The Thin Man (1934), an excellent comedy-mystery starring the delightful duo William Powell and Myrna Loy. They play Nick and Nora Charles, a debonair detective and his sophisticated wife, who find themselves embroiled in a murder case during the holidays. While Christmas is not crucial to the central plot of the film, there is still a lovely scene between the Charleses on the morning of December 25. W. S. Van Dyke directed from a script by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, based on...

Directed by George Seaton, Miracle on 34th Street (1947) begins when Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) is persuaded by Doris Walker (Maureen O'Hara), the special events director at Macy's department store in New York City, to play Santa Claus in their Thanksgiving Day Parade. He does such a good job that he is hired to as the store Santa during the holiday season. While he is successful, Doris learns that he has been directing clients to other stores and claiming that he is Santa Claus. Meanwhile, Doris's neighbour and friend, attorney Fred Gailey (John Payne), takes her skeptical young daughter, Susan (Natalie Wood), to see Santa at the store. Doris has raised Susan not to believe in fairy tales, but her lack of faith is shaken when she sees Kris conversing in Dutch with an orphan girl from the Netherlands who does not know English. Although Doris asks him to stop telling people that he is not really Santa Claus, Kris continues insisting that he is. Worried that he is delusi...