You may believe it is terribly lazy to simply reblog another writer’s review instead of writing some of my own, and you may be right, but Elizabeth Cantwell’s summary and then breakdown of White Christmas is charming, witty, and deft.
WHITE CHRISTMAS, DECONSTRUCTED
by Elizabeth Cantwell
As most of my friends know, I tend to conceptualize movies in terms of brief, disconnected scenes that for whatever reason stuck in my mind. (So: “The Godfather is the movie where there’s a cat on Brando’s lap, and people are making some kind of red sauce, and Al Pacino is in the rain, and they shoot James Caan at a toll booth.”) My detractors may claim this is unsophisticated, and a generally poor way to analyze a movie. I disagree. Following is my personal summary of the timeless classic White Christmas, with an insightful commentary.
White Christmas: The movie where there’s a big wall, and Rosemary Clooney wants to wash herself in snow, and Bing Crosby makes a good sandwich while Danny Kaye makes fun of Martha Graham, and then there’s some cardboard cutouts of fat farm people and Bing Crosby throws a perfectly good gift into a tree.
