White Christmas (1954)

White Christmas is an American comedy romance film first released in 1954, directed by Michael Curtiz.  The film stars Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen and Dean Jagger.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


Christmas Eve, 1944 - somewhere in Europe.  After staging a show in honour of their departing commanding officer, Major General Waverly, a platoon of U.S. troops comes under heavy artillery fire.   Phil Davis saves the life of fellow soldier Bob Wallace, a popular Broadway entertainer who, to show his gratitude, agrees to form a partnership with Phil after the war.  Despite Bob’s initial misgivings, the double act proves to be a great success.  Whilst the duo are performing in Florida, Phil decides to take an interest in Bob’s love life and introduces him to two sisters of an old army pal, Betty and Judy.  Pursued by their aggrieved landlord, the latter hastily leave town, with Phil and Bob’s help, and the four end up at a skiing lodge in Vermont run by General Waverley.  Having learned that the General is facing financial ruin because he is unable to attract enough business, Phil and Bob decide to put on a glitzy show at his hotel.  When Betty suspects that Bob intends to use the event for his own financial gain, she walks out on him and heads back to New York, just as Bob realises she is the only girl for him...

A perennial favourite for over a half a century, White Christmas remains one of the most cherished of yuletide-related film offerings, even if its yuletide content is frantically concertinaed into its last five minutes and looks almost like an afterthought.  The pairing of Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye isn’t so much inspired as almost indecently obvious, the former’s treacly old-fashioned charm perfectly complemented by the latter’s mischievous sense of fun.  Crosby and Kaye sing, play and dance together so naturally that you’d think they were two halves of a Gestalt entity, even if their screen personas are very different.  Their glamorous co-stars, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen, hardly get a look-in - this is the Bing and Danny show right from the off.

There are a few scenes in which the Crosby-Kaye double act does begin to grate a little, but such moments of mild discomfort are easily assuaged by the instantly uplifting Irving Berlin numbers, particularly the title song (originally written twelve years earlier for Holiday Inn, another Crosby vehicle), The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing, and the Oscar-nominated Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep.  Such toe-tapping delights help to distract us from the ludicrous plot and make it easier for us to cope with the volley of high-grade schmaltz that the screenwriters lob into our faces with something of the psychopathic zeal of a pie-flinger from a Mack Sennett comedy.  White Christmas has the distinction of being the first film to have been recorded using Paramount’s revolutionary VistaVision widescreen colour process, which would account for its garish use of colour and unconvincing studio exteriors.

Admittedly, the film does occasionally veer towards the patently ridiculous (Crosby and Kaye gaily performing Sisters - possibly the campest thing committed to celluloid in the 1950s) and the downright pretentious (the slightly hideous Choreography dance number), but these are minor sins when set beside the film’s occasional outbursts of tacky sentimentality.   It may not be Bing’s finest hour, and Michael Curtiz really ought to have known better, but there’s something irresistible about this gratuitous slush fest.  White Christmas has become as much a part of the fabric of the festive season as mince pies, mulled wine and eye-watering bank overdrafts, and it will doubtless continue to earn its place in the Christmas TV schedules long after the Harry Potter films and such like have all faded into total obscurity.  Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Bing crooning lovingly about treetops and sleighbells, now would it?

© Derek Adamson 2010

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