Parry and Thrust (originally published 9/95)

The heroes of today's action movies have to be handy with everything from high explosives to Harrier jets to every sort of handgun known to man. There was a time, however, when the one indispensable skill for an action hero was swordsmanship. A fencing duel was, after all, an ideal form of movie fight. Unlike an impersonal gunfight, the antagonists were necessarily close to each other and face to face. Also, unlike a fistfight, the antagonists could fight furiously without letup while simultaneously engaging in witty dialogue.

Interestingly, movie sword fights seem to be making something of a comeback. "Braveheart," "First Knight," and "Rob Roy" are all examples of recent films featuring spectacular sword fights as centerpieces of the action. If you've seen these films and found the swordplay thrilling, you may want to look for the following classic titles on home video. Each one features at least one sword fight that will curl your hair.

"The Prisoner of Zenda" (1937). David O. Selznick produced this adaptation of the classic Anthony J. Hope novel, giving it the same kind of opulent Selznick treatment that Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" would receive two years later. Ronald Colman plays the dual role of the kidnapped king of Ruritania and the look-alike English relative who stands in for him. The film's classic sword fight occurs when Colman the commoner leads an expedition to rescue Colman the royal prisoner from the castle at Zenda. Confronted by a villainous henchman (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), Colman engages him in a sword duel that meanders up the stairs, through the main hall, and out to the drawbridge.

"The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938). Even though new versions continue to appear, this version of the Robin Hood legend remains the definitive one for most movie fans. As the career of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., drew to a close, Errol Flynn emerged as the top swashbuckling star of the day. Here he is matched with an equally fine villain, the great Basil Rathbone as Sir Guy of Gisbourne. Their climactic sword fight is both exciting and visually striking, with the antagonists' shadows looming over them on huge pillars.

"The Mark of Zorro" (1940). Twenty years earlier, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., had virtually invented the swashbuckler genre with his screen adaptation of Johnston McCulley's story of Don Diego Vega. Diego, a Spanish nobleman living in California, poses as an effeminate dandy, but when danger threatens he becomes the mysterious masked Zorro, champion of the oppressed. This remake of the Fairbanks classic established Tyrone Power as a major action star. Again, the villain who crosses swords with our hero is Basil Rathbone, who made something of a specialty of this kind of role for a while. Although movie sword fights are never really authentic, this duel contains less of that silliness of jumping on the furniture than most. Even so, veteran director Rouben Mamoulian has no problem keeping it interesting.

"Scaramouche" (1952). This version of Rafael Sabatini's novel stars Stewart Granger as Andre Moreau, the illegitimate son of a French nobleman, who makes his way in the world as an actor portraying the masked clown Scaramouche. His bitter enemy is the Marquis de Maynes, played by Mel Ferrer. In addition to being Andre's rival for the hand of Aline de Gavrillac (Janet Leigh), the Marquis has killed a friend of Andre's in a grossly unfair sword duel. The Marquis, after all, is acknowledged to be the finest swordsman in France, while Andre's doomed friend was completely unschooled in swordplay. Andre is no more competent with a sword than his slain friend, and so can do nothing about the outrage, but he swears to learn the way of the blade and to have his revenge in time. His opportunity comes one evening in the theater. Spotting the hated Marquis in the crowd, Andre challenges him from the stage. Their incredible duel, one of the longest ever filmed, takes them through the entire theater, from foyer to stage. The film's promotional trailer, reproduced below courtesy of Turner Classic Movies, gives some indication of the scope of the climactic confrontation.



Of course, if you want to see where it all began, you can't do better than going back to the silent classics of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Several of them are available on home video, including "The Mark of Zorro" (1920), "The Black Pirate" (1926), and "The Iron Mask" (1929). You'll find that, although later swashbucklers learned more elegant sword techniques, no one ever surpassed the elder Fairbanks's sense of sheer fun.

Peace Out (originally published 8/95)

I love the Sixties. I know that Sixties-bashing is trendy in certain circles these days, and I recognize that the decade of the flower children was the occasion for lots of ill-advised excesses, but I still look back on it with fondness. From where I sit in the frosty, uncaring Nineties, excesses in the name of peace and love sound pretty good in contrast to the excesses in the name of greed and self-interest that we've all become accustomed to.

Even so, in cynical moments I've been known to remark ruefully that the only thing from the Sixties that seems to have survived is widespread recreational drug use. In fact, though, a lot of extraordinary music has also survived. We lost Janis along the way, and Jimi, and a few others we couldn't spare, but at least Jerry Garcia hung in there with us for a while to become an elder statesman of the counterculture. Now that Jerry is also gone, we'll have to work a little harder to hold on to the positive elements of the counterculture. We've still got the recorded music, of course, but I thought I would also suggest a few Sixties film titles to help keep the spirit alive. Each is available on home video.

"Alice's Restaurant" (1970). The inspiration for this film was the hilarious recording in which Arlo Guthrie recounts his arrest for littering in Stockbridge, Massachusetts on Thanksgiving Day and how it kept him out of the draft. From this fertile kernel, director Arthur Penn and screenwriter Venabel Herndon created a sympathetic, but by no means uncritical, portrait of life in a hippie commune. Arlo appears as himself.

"The Strawberry Statement" (1970). For a look at Hollywood's take on campus radicals, try this adaptation of James Kunen's "The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary." Bruce Davison plays a politically mainstream student who becomes radicalized by his university's arrogant power play to deprive underprivileged children of a playground. The musical backgrounds are rich with the sounds of the times, including songs by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.

"The Trip" (1967). With this low-budget film, we begin to see the work of a struggling young actor/screenwriter whose presence runs through the Sixties counterculture movies like a recurring theme in a symphony. His script for "The Trip" reflects the counterculture's hope that LSD would liberate the mind and enhance the spirit. As originally written, the script was apparently intended to be in the tradition of Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception," but the production company ultimately dumbed it down significantly. Peter Fonda plays a TV commercial director who becomes fed up with the shallowness of his life and turns to chemical stimulation in his search for meaning. The screenwriter, by the way, was Jack Nicholson.

"Psych-Out" (1968). Director Richard Rush's look at the youth culture of Haight-Ashbury was also based on a Jack Nicholson script, but it was so heavily rewritten that Nicholson received no credit. He did, however, star in the picture as (are you ready for this?) the leader of a psychedelic rock band, complete with ponytail.

"Head" (1968). By the time the Monkees got around to doing a movie to capitalize on their TV success, their show was already fading from the scene, and the youth culture had evolved into something that they would never have been allowed to deal with on the tube. Rather than beat a dead horse, they made the gutsy decision to exploit their own outdated image by making fun of it in the context of psychedelic imagery. Once again, Nicholson wrote the script, along with director Bob Rafelson.

"Easy Rider" (1969). Finally, we can't forget Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda's saga of two counterculture motorcyclists making their way down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. The phenomenal success of this shoestring production woke the film industry up to the potential of young filmmakers to tap into the vast youth market. And who was it who played the most interesting character role in "Easy Rider," thereby cementing his future as a major movie star rather than in the less lucrative position of screenwriter? Jack Nicholson, of course.



So take heart, Deadheads. Garcia may be gone, but vestiges of the Sixties remain. Even in a Hollywood establishment figure like Jack Nicholson there beats the heart of a former radical.

Peace, brother.

The Biopic as Opera (originally published 2/95)

Last week I took a look back at the long tradition of film biographies of famous composers, the most recent of which is "Immortal Beloved," featuring Gary Oldman as Beethoven. In recommending the films that I did, I was careful to point out that film biographies of composers, like all film biographies, should be regarded as sources of good entertainment rather than as sources of good history.

One fascinating case in point is the considerable body of work in this area by a filmmaker whom I did not mention last time. He's actually made more films about the lives of composers than any other filmmaker I'm aware of, but it certainly is not an interest in documenting the true and indisputable facts of the lives of these musicians that keeps him returning to this subject matter. He's got other fish to fry.

His name is Ken Russell. As the purveyor of one of the most interesting visual styles in the world of contemporary cinema, he makes films that rarely fail to evoke strong reactions -- both positive and negative. Whereas most films placidly unfold on the screen in front of you, a Russell film is more likely to grab you by the scruff of the neck and rough you up a bit. His imagery is big, broad, and passionate -- in a word, operatic.

That, I think, is the reason for his fascination with composers. His own relationship to the medium of film is more musical than dramatic. Indeed, he reminds me of no one so much as Ludwig van Beethoven, whose piano playing is said to have been so ferocious as to threaten to reduce the instrument to cordwood and splinters. That's more or less the way Russell makes a movie.

It's a style that is not for everyone, to be sure. In addition to sacrificing cinematic conventions on the altar of electrifying imagery, including some of the sacred cows of moviegoers for whom the play's the thing, Russell can be especially cavalier about historical accuracy. He'd much rather lay bare the soul of the music and see what it reveals about the soul of the composer.

Russell's early experiments with his unique style of composer biographies were produced for BBC television, including films about Elgar, Debussy, Richard Strauss, and Delius. None of these early works is currently available on video [2010 NOTE: Happily, this deficit has since been ameliorated. Of the programs mentioned here, only the Strauss bio remains unavailable.], but his three feature films dealing with composers' lives have been released. If you're ready for a unique viewing experience, give them a try.

"The Music Lovers" (1971). By way of presenting the life of Tchaikovsky, Russell offers us a meditation on the idealism of 19th century Romanticism. That may sound dry and academic, but I assure you that Russell has no difficulty bringing such musings vividly to life. We watch in growing alarm as Tchaikovsky uses the theatrical fantasy world of his music to retreat from harsh reality into a particularly disturbing kind of madness.

"Mahler" (1974). Russell's screen biography of Gustav Mahler is, on the surface, relatively conventional. We see Mahler toward the end of his life on a train journey with his wife, Alma. As they reflect on their turbulent relationship, the film provides illustrative flashbacks. Underneath, however, as Russell himself has pointed out, he was up to something rather crafty, borrowing the structural principle of the rondo from music and applying it to film. A piece of music in rondo form alternates a central theme with any number of variations, but always returning to the original theme before proceeding to the next variation. In "Mahler," Russell says, the central theme is love while the variations are scenes representing aspects of death.

"Lisztomania" (1975). Last week I mentioned "Song Without End" (1960), in which Franz Liszt is portrayed as a matinee idol. In "Lisztomania," Russell takes that concept to its logical conclusion, recognizing that Liszt was in effect the first rock star. To nail down the point, he cast a sure-enough rock star, Roger Daltrey of The Who, to play the part of Liszt. The imagery here is about as wild as it gets, so you may not want to make this your first Russell movie.

Like the audience who staggered out of the first performance of Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony, those who see Ken Russell's work experience the vertiginous sensation of the aesthetic ground shifting under their feet. You may emerge elated or infuriated, possibly both, but you won't be unaffected.

The Maestros (originally published 2/95)

Motion pictures, right from the beginning, have always had a special relationship with music. Even in the silent film era you'd find some form of music wherever movies were exhibited. It might be anything from an orchestra or elaborate theater organ in the fancier venues to an out-of-tune upright piano of questionable lineage in the small-town theaters. Indeed, even the introduction of spoken dialogue could not replace the musical accompaniment. Instead, music and dialogue became more or less equal partners in the aural dimension of the movie experience.

Given this intimate relationship between movies and music, what could be a more natural subject matter for a film than the life of a composer? The current release of "Immortal Beloved" gives us the very talented Gary Oldman in the role of Beethoven, following in the successful footsteps of Tom Hulce's Mozart in "Amadeus" (1984). In fact, though, the tradition of movie biographies of famous composers goes much farther back than "Amadeus." Some of them haven't yet made it to home video, but a number of the better-known examples are available.

One caveat, however. Movie biographies of composers have one thing in common with all other movie biographies: you can't expect historical accuracy from them. Movies are show biz, after all, and life stories are simply too complex to make for good drama, even when the life in question is the fascinating story of a musical genius. So, if you want to learn the facts about the lives of the musical masters, the library will be your best bet. But if you just want an entertaining story and lots of good music, look for these titles.

"Rhapsody in Blue" (1945). Robert Alda (Alan's dad) stars as George Gershwin. One of the most interesting things about this picture is the supporting cast. Because the film was made only a few years after Gershwin's premature death, many of the composer's contemporaries were still around to portray themselves in the film. For example, Paul Whiteman, the bandleader who popularized the "Rhapsody in Blue," appears as himself, as does Oscar Levant, a close friend of Gershwin's. Reproduced below, courtesy of Turner Classic Movies, is the film's promotional trailer. As you will see, the film is a product of its time, proudly featuring Al Jolson performing "Swanee" in full, cringe-inducing blackface. O tempora, o mores...



"A Song to Remember" (1945). Cornel Wilde stars as Frederic Chopin. Merle Oberon plays his love interest, novelist Armandine Dupin, who is better remembered by her pen name, George Sand. The third principal cast member is the formidable Paul Muni as Professor Joseph Elsner, the music teacher who recognizes the genius of the young Chopin and helps launch his career.

"Song of Love" (1947). Katharine Hepburn and Paul Henried portray Clara Wieck Schumann and Robert Schumann in one of music's most poignant love stories. Clara Wieck was one of the finest pianists in Europe. Her marriage to Schumann, the romantic's romantic, undeniably impaired her musical career. At the same time, we have no way of knowing how much of Schumann's music might never have been written without her stabilizing influence in his life. The movie stretches the friendship between Johannes Brahms (played by Robert Walker) and Clara into a romantic interest on Brahms's part. (Show biz, remember?)

"Song Without End" (1960). Is it just me, or are you beginning to notice a trend in these titles? Maybe there's still time to change the Beethoven title to "Song of the Immortal Beloved." This one is about Franz Liszt, with Dirk Bogarde in the lead role. In a way, Liszt is an ideal subject for a movie, because he was something of a matinee idol in his day. His first and greatest acclaim came not as a composer but rather as a performer. He was, by all accounts, one of the most gifted pianists of all time. As we see his head being turned by the adulation of his fans, especially women, we can easily relate his story to those of more contemporary performers.

In fact, there's another film about Liszt that develops that aspect of his life even further than "Song Without End" does. Next week, I'll tell you about that film, and about the visionary filmmaker who largely built his early reputation on biographies of the great composers.

The Table (originally published 1/95)

During the extraordinarily fecund decade of the 1920s, the city of Paris saw an amazingly stellar confluence of creative talent, from Ernest Hemingway to Pablo Picasso to Gertrude Stein. But across the Atlantic in New York City, a similar amalgamation of talent regularly gathered around a single table at a single restaurant. It was, of course, the famed Round Table at the Algonquin Hotel.

A list of Round Table regulars reads like a who's who of 20s and 30s theater and journalism. It included playwrights George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber, and Robert Sherwood, as well as newspaper columnists Heywood Broun, Ring Lardner, and Franklin P. Adams. The group encompassed everything from drama critics like Robert Benchley and Alexander Woollcott to performers like Harpo Marx and Tallulah Bankhead.

It was indeed a heady group of potent personalities that gathered for those illustrious lunches, but perhaps the most compelling personality of all was packed into the diminutive form of Dorothy Parker. Combining a sweetness of manner with a quick and lacerating wit, she was no one to trifle with. Clare Booth Luce, for example, learned the cost of crossing verbal lances with her when she allowed Parker to precede her through a door with a derisive "Age before beauty." Walking past Luce with a flourish, Parker replied, "Pearls before swine."

In the current release, "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle," the formidable Mrs. Parker and her talented associates are recreated for a generation that has, incredibly, forgotten most of them. If the film and its attendant publicity has stirred your curiosity about these remarkable men and women, here are some titles featuring their work to look for on video.

"The Man Who Came to Dinner" (1941). Based on a play by Round Tabler George S. Kaufman, the title character of this comedy is in turn based on another member of the group, critic Alexander Woollcott. The character's name is Sheridan Whiteside, an irascible and imperious radio and newspaper columnist. Forced by an accidental injury to convalesce in the home of a family whom he clearly considers beneath him, he makes certain that everyone in the household stays at least as miserable as he is.

"A Star is Born" (1937). Janet Gaynor stars as a small-town girl gone to Hollywood in search of stardom. The roots of this familiar story extend back to a play called "Merton of the Movies" by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly, both Round Tablers, and this version was adapted for the screen in part by Dorothy Parker and her husband Alan Campbell.

"Abe Lincoln in Illinois" (1940). Round Tabler Robert Sherwood adapted his own Pulitzer Prize winning play focusing on Lincoln's life and careers before winning the presidency. Raymond Massey, who had played the title role on the stage, repeated his widely praised performance for the film version. George Kaufman's comment was, "Massey won't be satisfied until he's assassinated."

"The Sky's the Limit" (1943). The many delightful short films featuring Robert Benchley giving mock-pompous lectures remain, so far, maddeningly unavailable on video. [2010 NOTE: Happily, this is no longer the case. Several of the Benchley short subjects can now be obtained on DVD from Warner Brothers' Warner Archive collection.] Until this outrage is rectified, we'll have to make do with this Fred Astaire musical which includes one of those Benchley lectures as the highlight of one of its scenes. When he begins fumbling around with charts to make a point that he's long since forgotten, you may well get the eerie sensation that Benchley was lampooning Ross Perot some 50 years before Ross got it together.

"Dinner at Eight" (1933). Based on a play by Round Tablers Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman and adapted in part by Round Tabler Herman Mankiewicz, this was one of the all-star productions in which the MGM studio showcased its impressive stable of talent. The film portrays an elegant dinner party at which the patina of glamor and refinement barely masks the miserable lives of its participants. Reproduced below, courtesy of Turner Classic Movies, is the film's promotional trailer.



In a way, the dinner party of "Dinner at Eight" comes uncomfortably close to mirroring those Round Table luncheons. As talented and clever as they were, most of the Round Table crew were substance abusers, and many of them came to a bad, lonely end. Their story is an object lesson in the frailty of the vessels that incarnate the entertainment and wisdom we most treasure. We might do well to bear that frailty in mind as the chill winds of partisan politics begin to blow through the institutions that support today's creative talents.

Vaulting Ambition (originally published 11/95)

If you buy the premise that storytellers do their best work when dealing with familiar subject matter, the recent success of "To Die For" makes perfect sense. Who would know better about driving ambition and a blind, amoral hunger for success than the filmmaking community? As you might imagine, it's a subject they've dealt with many times before. Here are some earlier movies about vaulting ambition and its victims. Each is available on video.

"All About Eve" (1950). Writer-director Joseph Mankiewicz's classic turns a jaundiced eye on the rise of Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), the newest toast of Broadway. The film begins with a ceremony honoring Eve for winning the Sarah Siddons award for acting, then flashes back to show us how many people she stepped on to reach that pinnacle. Most especially she steps on Margo Channing (Bette Davis), the Broadway star whom Eve befriends only to betray. The seamy proceedings are narrated for us in appropriately cynical fashion by dyspeptic theater critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders).

"Room At the Top" (1959). The late 1950s and early 1960s in Britain saw the emergence of a group of playwrights and filmmakers who have been collectively labeled the "angry young man" dramatists. This pungent indictment of the British class system is a product of that movement. Laurence Harvey stars as Joe Lampton, an ambitious working class fellow who is determined to rise in the world. Recognizing that no amount of industriousness will accomplish this goal, he resolves to marry into the upper crust. He pursues and wins the affection of a young woman from a highly placed family. At the same time, he begins an affair with a woman nearer his own station in life, for whom he has genuine feelings. Needless to say, the time comes when he must choose between love and ambition.

"The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" (1974). Based on the novel by Mordecai Richler, this Canadian film offers an early look at the developing talents of Richard Dreyfuss, who plays the title role. Duddy is a driven and ambitious young man, torn between the example of his father, a two-bit hustler, and that of his uncle, a successful and ethically responsible businessman. Duddy, hungry for quick success, elects the low road, achieving some success but losing his uncle's respect in the process.

"The Day of the Locust" (1975). It took only 36 years for Nathanael West's caustic short novel on the underbelly of Hollywood to be adapted into a movie. Considering the intensely unflattering portrait West paints of the movie colony, it's actually a little surprising that it ever made it to the screen at all. Karen Black plays Faye Greener, an ambitious, amoral young actress who is determined to make it in the movie business. In furthering her aspirations she does not hesitate to use those who fall under the spell of her superficial charm. The first of these is Tod Hackett (William Atherton), a set designer through whose eyes we see the story unfold. More tragically, she strings along a simple-minded fellow named Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland), who becomes her sugar daddy without even receiving the usual benefits in return. Faye sacrifices Homer to her ambition without a thought, despite the fact that she never even achieves the success for which she has ruined his life.

"Macbeth" (1948). The ultimate tale of ruinous ambition, of course, is the one that gave us the phrase "vaulting ambition" in the first place. Macbeth, a Scottish nobleman and kinsman of King Duncan, is tricked by three witches into coveting the crown. Spurred on by his ruthless wife, he murders Duncan and diverts suspicion of the deed onto Duncan's sons, who therefore flee the country. This leaves Macbeth free to claim the throne. In the end, however, it is Macbeth himself who is the victim of his own reckless ambition. Orson Welles, one of the best cinematic interpreters of Shakespeare, made this stylish version of "Macbeth" on a shoestring budget for Republic, a studio best known for its B-Westerns and serials.

"Macbeth" is renowned in the theater as a bad luck play. Maybe that's because it, like each of these films, is about the attempt to forge one's own luck out of the misery of others. It's a doomed endeavor but, as Nicole Kidman knows, it makes for good drama.

Christmas Lite (originally published 12/93)

Remember what Christmas movie viewing was like in the bad old days before home video? The television networks and their affiliates made all the choices for you. If the only time "It's A Wonderful Life" was being shown was at 1:00am on December 21, your options were either to miss it or to sit up half the night and then spend the next day wishing you'd never been born.

Now, of course, things are different. You can program your own living room Christmas film festival, scheduled at your convenience and featuring only the kind of Christmas movies you like best. Some of us like the hardcore stuff -- drenched in mistletoe, cascading snow and sentimentality, and presided over by St. Nick himself. You might call us the "Miracle on 34th Street" crowd. Others, however, prefer their seasonal film fare with just a light dusting of the trappings of Christmas, while the focus of the main storyline remains elsewhere. Since this latter type is less easy to identify, I thought it might be useful to list a few films that fall into that category. These are not primarily Christmas movies, but all of them include at least one important Christmas scene.

"The Man Who Came to Dinner" (1942) Monty Woolley plays Sheridan Whiteside, a character transparently based on Alexander Woollcott, a prominent literary and stage critic of the time. Woollcott was one of the mainstays of the famed Algonquin round table, a celebrated aggregation of witty and sophisticated tastemakers that included Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker. Personally, however, he was more than a little hard to take. Known for his sharp tongue and acid wit, Woollcott delighted in turning clever phrases at the expense of others. Sheridan Whiteside is, if such a thing is possible, a caricature of Woollcott crafted by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the authors of the play on which the film is based, who knew Woollcott well. Whiteside is on a lecture tour a couple of weeks before Christmas when he is persuaded to have dinner with a nouveau riche businessman named Stanley and his socialite wife. Although he considers them riffraff, he grudgingly goes. Unfortunately for all concerned, he slips on the ice on their front stoop and finds himself confined to the couple's home for several weeks while his injuries heal. Whiteside commandeers the couple's home, as is his custom, throwing their lives into complete chaos. Ultimately it becomes necessary to bring in a radio remote crew so that Whiteside can do the Christmas Eve broadcast of his radio show from the Stanley living room. This is an enormously entertaining film, crackling with clever Kaufman-Hart dialogue. Reproduced below, courtesy of Turner Classic Movies, is the film's promotional trailer.



"Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944) It's an MGM musical directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Judy Garland. What more do you need to know? The story portrays four episodes (one for each season of the year) in the life of the Smith family of St. Louis. The winter sequence, which revolves around who will escort whom to the Christmas ball, features Garland singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

"The Bells of St. Mary's" (1945) In a sequel to the highly successful "Going My Way" (1944), Bing Crosby repeats his role as Father O'Malley. This time he finds himself butting heads, albeit gently and lightheartedly, with the mother superior (Ingrid Bergman) of a parish school that is so old and creaky that it is in danger of being condemned. In one especially charming scene the two of them watch the first-graders rehearsing the Christmas play that they have written. Crosby's acting style, as always, is as comfortable as an old shoe, and Bergman plays off him perfectly.

"Fanny and Alexander" (1982). If you think of Ingmar Bergman movies exclusively as morbid flicks about long-faced Swedes sitting around discussing the silence of God, this film will be a real eye-opener. It is a visually beautiful film that opens with a family Christmas celebration. The two title characters are children, and most of the film reflects their fascination with the magic of life. There's misfortune along the way, sure, but not the kind of unremitting, soul-deadening angst that has come to be associated with Bergman. Do take note of the R rating, however. It's not typical Bergman, but it's not Disney either.

If you prefer your Christmas fare low-key, these films should fill the bill. Meanwhile, I'll be off somewhere gorging myself on "Miracle on 34th Street."