Holiday-themed movies have become as intrinsic a part of the season as getting drunk on eggnog and passing out under the mistletoe while relatives sneak awkwardly out the door.

But does a film necessarily have to include persecuted Santas and suicide-preventing angels to be a true "Christmas classic?" Before you slip in your well-worn copy of A Christmas Story or Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, consider some titles from The Pink Smoke's alternative list of movies that touch on the most wonderful time of the year (to varying degrees.)

~ by john benjamin cribbs ~

I wrapped up my last Cine-Mas piece with a mild tangent on the obligatory farce of convincing our sons and daughters that yes, there is indeed a Santa Claus who lives right across the lane from Cookie Monster in the vicinity of Narnia near Willie Wonka's chocolate factory. You guys thought I was just being cranky, but it turns out that was a li'l prelude to writing about a movie in which a young girl's tendency towards fantasy and her father's insistence on such sober responsibilities as strengthening one's social network and eschewing eccentric strangers take center stage. The movie is Val Lewton's The Curse of the Cat People, the young girl is six-year-old Amy Reed, as sensitive and introverted a child as The Hunt's Klara and just as prone to flights of whimsy that unintentionally upset the steady flow of the lives around her. Because she's constantly in a dream world, she doesn't interact with classmates or neighborhood children and even strikes out at a well-intentioned boy who scoops up a butterfly she was enchantedly chasing and inadvertently crushes it, shattering Amy's ethereal reverie. Concerned about her antisocial behavior, her parents Oliver and Alice count on an upcoming birthday party to help blossom their little wallflower. But Amy's innocent daydreams once again create a barrier: tasked with sending out the invitations, she delivers them not to the mailbox but inside the knot of what her father once told her was a "magic wishing tree," where they remain undelievered. Oliver scolds her for continuing to believe in so fanciful a notion...then insists she blow out her birthday candles and make a wish that will magically come true.

These contradictory constraints upon Amy to set aside her sheltered life yet maintain her innocence are at the core of a major parental frustration: how to protect a child from the realities of the harsh world while at same time preparing her for them. This informs my entire Santa Claus conundrum* - if you tell your daughter about a magic wishing tree, you can't get mad when none of the birthday invitations end up in the mailbox and you're out one clown rental deposit and whatever you invested in party fizoos. Even the family's Jamaican servant (his presence a hark back to the superstitious islanders of I Walked with a Zombie) insists that the ring Amy has mysteriously procured must have supernatural powers, yet is clearly uncomfortable when Amy follows up by visiting its dubious presenter, an elderly recluse who may be mentally unbalanced. Throughout Curse, there's the conflict between what's classified as "good" or "acceptable" fantasy, like making a wish while blowing out a birthday candle, and "bad" fantasy, like making a wish on a magic ring which conjures an imaginary friend to socialize with in lieu of interaction with classroom chums. Most parents take for granted that differentiating between the two is just part of growing up, and don't consider it necessary to explicitily distinguish "make believe" from lying. This inadvertent neglect, especially on a sensitive kid like Amy, can be inimically perplexing - I mean, why is it ok to believe a jolly fat man brings presents on Christmas, yet harmful to wrap up a gift for your magical guardian angel? Is it just because one established act of pretend comes from the grown-up figures while the other is an independent, creative impulse on the part of the child, which adults so often find threatening?

To emphasize just how threatened Oliver feels towards his daughter's imagination, the magical playmate who materializes to provide Amy the whimsical indulgence she so desperately needs takes the appearance of Irena, Oliver's dead wife whose memory casts a persistent gloom upon his life and marriage. Even setting aside the background of the first Cat People, which I'll get back to in a minute, Irena is characterized by Oliver and Alice as a morbid brooder whose mental problems resulted in a violent death and Irena's suicide (in his review, James Agee even refers to the late Irena as "insane"). Oliver obviously sees traces of Irena in Amy, "something moody, something sickly" in her musings which he goes so far as to label Irena's "curse." However absurd the comparison, considering she's not Irena's daughter, Amy develops an immediate attachment to Irena's ghost/spiritual likeness (although Amy has already made her wish for a companion and is seen prancing around in the garden "as if there's someone playing with her," it's established that she sees a picture of the real Irena and learns her name prior to her new friend appearing and speaking onscreen). Amy continues to rely on her Ideal Playmate despite Oliver's emphatic objections - things come to a head when the father decides to physically punish the child for refusing to renounce her special friend's existence. For Oliver it's another step, like burning old pictures of Irena, in further removing himself from the heedlessly romantic inclinations of his own youth; for Amy, it's another mixed signal from a man who insisted on the power of wishing yet for some reason takes offense to the idea of a ring that summons an imaginary friend who looks just like his gorgeous, crazy dead wife.

The ring's fairy tale mystique is crystallized at its introduction, released atop a floating handkerchief by a disembodied hand from the high window of a gargoyle-guarded gothic house the local children have decided harbors a witch. They're not too far off: the old lady inside is Julia Farren, a former stage actor who draws Amy into her reclusive world to regale her with an intense recital of the story of The Headless Horseman. Julia is as alluring a figure to Amy as the otherwordly Irena, calling out to her from this towering house where doors appear to magically open and book pages flutter and turn themselves. Like Amy, Julia is fortified behind a wall of fantasy, although at her age it borders on dementia and creates a very real threat that neither she or Amy can perceive. The threat comes from Barbara, Julia's adult daughter who practically haunts the house, her severe features peaking out behind curtains, her imposing figure moving in and out of shadows so that she feels like a living extention of its bleak interior. She's been relegated to a peripheral specter by Julia, who barely acknowledges Barbara and refuses to believe that she's her daughter, explaining to Amy that she's an "imposter...a liar and a cheat." Julia's managed to isolate her daughter for the exact opposite reason Oliver has reprimanded Amy: instead of insisting on reality, Julia is so immersed in illusion she's stripped Barbara of her very real identity. Oliver so readily equates Amy's vivid imagination with lying that he doesn't even buy the story of the ring falling from the window, thinking Amy daydreamed the "voices from an old dark house." The irony is that when Barbara tries to tell Julia that she's her daughter the old woman accuses her of lying, negating her existence as resolutely as Oliver: "My daughter Barbara died when she was 6...you're only the woman who takes care of me."

That's a beautiful and chilling line of dialogue, as blatantly harsh as it is emotionally ambiguous. The woman who takes care of you is your mother - Julia has switched roles with Barbara, assigning the younger woman protective and domestic duties without the benefit of mutual affection. The line suggests that Barbara's been treated as a stranger by her mother most of her life, and the entrance into the household of Amy - who, at 6, clearly reminds Julia of her "lost" daughter (Edward offhandedly notes the similar hair color between Amy and the grown woman) - spells disaster for her long-deteriorating mental state. Barbara looks on spitefully as her mother makes a huge fuss over the 25 cent ring Amy brings her as a gift while her huge Christmas present to Julia sits unopened on the table. It's barely mentioned, but you can just imagine how Barbara must have poured for months over the perfect gift that would help rekindle the bond between herself and Julia, only to upstaged by some plastic novelty ring (goddammit!) For her part, Amy is unaware of the complicated psychological toll her presence is taking on Barbara, happy only to find a truly tangible version of Irena. Julia cares for Amy and indulges her dream world, furnishing the same sensitivity and understanding as her magical Ideal Playmate that her worried father can't provide. Oliver seems content to "only take care of" Amy, acting responsibily towards keeping his daughter safe without supporting or cultivating her creativity and independent thinking the way a parent should, tempting an emotional estrangement from his daughter that Barbara has experienced with her mother.

It's here in the Farren house that Lewton, critical though he may be of Oliver and his emphasis on the substantive, suggests that fantasy can be harmful. Julia Farren has gone too far into fantasy (too "Farren" to fantasy?) For her, it's no longer distinguishable from real life: she's incapable of acknowledging her own daughter or of recognizing the precarious situation her neglect of Barbara has generated. Barbara sees in Amy the little girl her mother wants, that she'll never be again, and her resentment at having Julia's fantasy dictate her reality intensifies to the point that she threatens to murder Amy. Fantasy for Amy is a beautiful and underappreciated form of expression but it's also her refuge: she chases butterflies because the other kids don't understand her, and summons a magical playmate when her father won't entertain her natural creative and curious impulses. As a result of letting fantasy guide her reality, she places herself directly in danger: she sets out alone at night in the middle of a bitter snowstorm trying to find Irena, hides from the search crew when she mistakes the noise they make for the Headless Horseman and escapes to the sanctuary of the Farren house where a homicidal Barbara lies in wait. The Farrens' melodrama comes to a tragic end when Julia dies of heart failure trying to hide Amy from Barbara, yet Lewton allows fantasy to once again intervene for the good when Amy sees Irena superimposed over Barbara's murderous visage: the princess reawakens when the witch dies. Amy embraces her "friend" - the unexpected, empathetic gesture subdues the would-be killer's rage. Amy shared a special bond with Julia, whose world was one of fantasy, but it turns out it's the imbalanced Barbara, crushed by reality, who she really comes to understand: the unloved, lonely woman who's been rejected by her parent.

(I hate to do this, but just to avoid confusion from here on, I'm going to refer to the Irena character from Cat People as "Irena" and the Irena character from Curse as Amy's "Ideal Playmate.")

It's tempting to detach Curse entirely from Cat People, as tonally and thematically opposite as the two movies are. But the vague connection between the original film and its alleged sequel, extraneous at best, isn't altogether dismissible. Of course the superficial affiliation is the casting of Kent Smith, Jane Randolph and Simone Simon, playing the same characters who have the same relationships with each other, but there are legitimate comparisons beyond that. For one thing, Amy suffers from the same kind of accidental persecution by Oliver and Alice as Simon's Irena in the first film. The couple, as adorably suited as they are to each other's sensibilities, are clearly not on the same wavelength as Irena or her 6-year-old surrogate. A visual link between the two films are the model ships that Oliver and Alice find so fascinating in the museum: Irena doesn't share their interest, and Oliver uses it as an excuse to send her away while he spends time showing off his nautical knowledge to Alice. His love of toy ships carries over to Curse, and again he inadvertently uses it to put himself above poor Amy, who's completely disinterested in the model ship Oliver is building her as a "reward" for her efforts to play with the other children.

The image of a ship is the furthest Oliver's mind goes when it comes to risk or adventure: something exciting yet practical, engineered, a far cry from the flying carpets or magical carriages Amy would doubtlessly conjure up given the same criteria (it also goes to show how much effort people who aren't naturally "fun" parents have to go through to even try to win over their kid: one look at Julia's forbidden house of mystery and Amy's entranced, yet poor Oliver slaves away all day building a model ship and she could care less, just like Julia ignoring Barbara's big Christmas present). Oliver and Alice's approach to both Irena and Amy is well-intentioned but judgmental, Irena condescendingly treated as the Poor Little Backwards Foreign Girl, Amy as the hopeless little kid who can't take care of herself. The insecure Oliver in particular** was threatened by Irena's own mystical aura, her danger and allure presented as her "cat" self: Amy channels that image into her Ideal Playmate, and just like in Cat People Oliver rejects it/Irena all over again, refusing to believe her as an ancient transmorphing creature or a friendly ghost.

Irena may or may not have turned into a vengeful panther, may or may not have been brought back as Amy's Ideal Playmate, but the constant fate of the "Irena" character in both movies is rejection by the real world. To me, the most important connection between Cat People and Curse is the recurring casting of Simone Simon and Elizabeth Russell, who has that memorable walk-on in the original film as a fellow sultry Serbian who greets Irena as "moya sestra" ("my sister"), suggesting she's a fellow "cat person." Even though there isn't the faintest mention of cat people in Curse of the Cat People, the presence of these two actresses, each playing vastly different characters, indicates that the real "curse" of the cat people is to be reduced to fantasy. Whether they are considered deluded foreigners (Irena), figments of a little girl's imagination (Amy's Ideal Playmate) or non-existent, as is the case with Elizabeth Russell's Barbara having her identity denied by Julia, the four characters played by the two actresses share the bane of being outcast. Irena is the tragic figure of Cat People more than the bathrobe-slashing monster the other characters make her out to be: whether she's a shape-shifting monster or not, she carries horrors from her past in Serbia that Oliver is just never going to understand or be able to deal with. And obviously the tragic figure of Curse is Barbara, who among the straight characters comes closest to supernatural with her spectral presence in the Farren domain: being rejected by her mother has made her as peripheral and ominous as a prowling house cat. (It also seems significant that the Ideal Playmate protects Amy from Barbara, considering that Irena clearly saw Russell's minor character as a threat in the original movie.)

In Curse, the earthly power of the "cat people" is persecuted by the unimaginative - the black cat in the tree "machine gunned" by boys in Amy's class - and fatally dismissed by the ignorant - the stuffed mural of the cat devouring the bird above Julia's head. The mural is a direct link to Goya's painting "Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuniga," described as Irena's favorite work of art, which depicts three cats (Irena, the Ideal Playmate and Barbara?) eyeing an oblivious child's distracted pet bird. If the child is Amy and the bird as coveted a prize as the painting suggests, it must symbolize some kind of redemption that the "cat people" characters hope to achieve through the innocence of the young girl.

As I mentioned when I wrote about The Hunt, Christmas is a time for redemption, and Irena cuts a mean Mary figure: maternal and nurturing, plenarily virginal, stuck out in the snow with no home to speak of (Oliver even suggests that Amy was an immaculate conception, behaving more like Irena's child than Alice's, an innocently insensitive remark that needless to say does not sit well with Alice). Kind of ironic that Oliver should deny this version of his former wife, considering there isn't a hint of the Cat People character's dark damsel emitting sexual mystery that he found so threatening - the Ideal Playmate edition of Irena has practically been neutered. But happily Irena's preoccupation with death also appears to have dissipated: supposedly cured of her morbidity by actually dying, the Ideal Friend refutes her thoughts on death from Cat People by telling Amy the silent, lonely place Irena had longed for is not a good place to be.

Like any tradition that's observed year after year, Christmas inevitably tends to lose some of its luster, especially when it becomes the same by-the-book appreciation without deviation. You see some of that joyless holiday insistence in the snooty kid who informs Amy that it's not "proper" to open presents Christmas morning as opposed to Christmas Eve night. Just as fantasy can be freeing or dangerous, Lewton knows that magic can't be contained or structured - it's messy, it's not proper. There's no difference between throwing up some tinsel, singing a few carols and being a model ship enthusiast: it's as far as people without any true notion of the unknown are willing to venture outside of their safe boundaries. It's apparent in the way Olvier doesn't actually look to see if Amy's Ideal Friend is there, not when he's trying to get Amy to confess her dishonesty or in the final scene when he decides to "believe" Amy that her friend exists. If Lewton makes a distinction between Christmas and imagination, it's that everything associated with "acceptable" fantasy - jolly Santa, flying reindeer, talking snowmen - is always going to be restricting in some sense whereas personal vision, though messy and fraught with potential risk, is freeing. Lewton believes that a loving, functional family household, free of cat persons and decked out in holiday cheer, can be cold and incarcerating while a foreboding old house enthralled in ominous shadows and inhabited by a severe spinster who harbors homicidal resentment towards a six-year-old can seem open and emancipating. You may manage a perfectly-run zoo, but sometimes you've just got to let the panther out of its cage.

Substituting the question of whether or not there's a Santa (there's not) with the practically theological Val Lewton enigma of "magical or mundane?" that hovered over Irena's could-be cat woman and Jessica Holland's possible zombie forges the perfect ambiguity. There's no clear answer as to whether Amy's spectral visitor is real or in her mind,*** or if there is it's complicated and selective to exactly what one considers transcendent, but through Amy's visions the audience becomes an invisible accessory to her impenetrable private world. The most intimate moment of the movie is Amy sneaking the present for her friend away from the tree with a quick knowing glance at the camera. It's this present, a brooch of falling stars, that subtly suggests the supernatural: we know the gift exists because Oliver and Alice comment on the package, so how could Amy's Ideal Playmate pin it to her dress if she's not real? (Assuming of course the brooch isn't just left sticking out of the otherwise undisturbed snow in the backyard when Amy comes back inside.) Amy's experiences, simple whimsies whether real or imagined and always equally enchanting and terrifying as only a child's could be, become our own: Lewton lets us see the face of Irena's spirit only after Amy has seen her photograph, and we feel Amy's fear when Barbara ascends the stairs to strangle her (possibly the scariest image in any Lewton film thanks to DP Nicholas Musuraca,**** who used a similar shot to great effect in Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Straircase, released by RKO the following year):

The only other film I can think of that so profoundly captures the beauty and danger when the fantasy and reality of a child's world crash into each other is Night of the Hunter, another Christmas-set non-holiday pseudo-horror classic, and like that picture's pint-sized protagonists, having survived through her ordeal with the help of the divine visions of an exquisite child's mind - Amy Reed will abide and endure.