It is officially holiday movie season, and the Harvard Film Archive is kicking off the festivities on a reliably unpredictable note. On Thursday, the HFA screens a beautiful new 35 mm print of “Carol for Another Christmas” (1964), “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling’s fiercely political take on the Dickens classic. Our Scrooge figure is Daniel Grudge, a warmongering industrialist played by Sterling Hayden (perhaps best known as General Jack D. Ripper from “Dr. Strangelove”). Grudge is, of course, visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve – here played by Steve Lawrence, Pat Hingle and Robert Shaw of “Jaws” – but this time around they aim to dissuade him from helping build an American nuclear arsenal. “Another Christmas” was directed by the great Joseph L. Mankiewicz and features an all-star cast that also includes Ben Gazzara, Eva Marie Saint and Hayden’s “Strangelove” co-star Peter Sellers as a daffy cult leader who rules over the postapocalyptic Christmas Future. It’s typically mind-blowing stuff from Serling – and, like the best of his “Twilight Zone” episodes, remains startlingly relevant.
If you’re looking for something with a little more holiday cheer, The Brattle Theatre once again brings in “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) for its beloved annual run from Friday through Monday. You probably don’t need me to explain the plot of this one; Frank Capra’s story, in which Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey sees what would have become of his beloved Bedford Falls had he never been born, has long since been woven into our cultural DNA. But as wonderful as that climactic sequence is, I’ve always been just as taken with the film leading up to it. Capra’s Bedford Falls is one of the most lived-in locales in cinema history, with a cast of characters so vivid they feel like family more than 75 years later. When they all come together at the end in support of George (spoiler alert, I suppose), it’s especially meaningful because you feel like you know all these people. George Bailey is the richest man in Bedford Falls – and we are richer for having this movie.
On the other hand, maybe you’d prefer a little more kick in your eggnog. Also this weekend, The Brattle has a 50th anniversary 4k restoration of Bob Clark’s yuletide horror classic “Black Christmas” (1974). Though perhaps not as well-known as some of its contemporaries, “Black Christmas” is one of the most influential horror movies ever made: It is widely considered the first true slasher film, setting the template for “Halloween” (1978), “Friday the 13th” (1980) and literally hundreds of other imitators. But “Black Christmas” is a remarkable piece of work in its own right, with a killer cast (including Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, Andrea Martin and John Saxon) and a surprisingly progressive prochoice subplot. And while you’re at it, you can catch Clark’s other holiday classic a few days later: on Tuesday, the Landmark Kendall Square Cinema shows his beloved cable staple “A Christmas Story” (1983), which finds the director working in a very different seasonal vein. When it comes to holiday filmmakers, Bob Clark is firmly on both the naughty and nice lists.
Shifting gears entirely, the Harvard Film Archive begins its retrospective of the legendary Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray with a weekendlong engagement of his timeless Apu Trilogy. Adapted from a pair of novels by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, Ray’s films follow a Bengali youth from childhood through young adulthood across three installments – “Pather Panchali” (1955, screening Friday and Sunday), “Aparajito” (1956, Saturday and Sunday) and “The World of Apu” (1959, Saturday and Monday) – with a deft, impressionistic touch. Long out of circulation and nearly lost in a fire that destroyed their negatives, the films of the trilogy have thankfully retaken their place in the world cinema canon; while “Aparajito” screens via Janus Films’ loving digital restoration, the other two are projected from the HFA’s priceless film prints, making these screenings a must for fans of film history.
On Tuesday, The Brattle kicks off its inaugural “Unsilent Nights” series, exercising a recently revamped sound system with the most earth-rattling films the programmers can get their hands on. First up will be Steven Spielberg’s UFO-contactee classic “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977). “Close Encounters” is perhaps the ultimate Spielberg film, combining all the best elements of his early films – the eerie menace of “Jaws,” the suburban wonder of “E.T.,” the pure spectacle of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” – with some unusually heady themes of humans’ purpose and place in the universe. Of course, that’s not why it’s playing in this series; it’s playing because of that amazing finale, in which a team of scientists (led by French filmmaker François Truffaut!) attempts to communicate with the aliens by way of a Moog synthesizer and some enormous Marshall stacks. Music is, after all, the universal language – and you’ll have those five famous notes ringing in your ears for days.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)3 nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.