A classic

To be honest, I usually don’t care at all about Christmas movies but since this one was a classic and since it was available on Disney+, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, at first, I was worried that this movie would be pretty cheesy but, slowly, I have to admit that the damned thing actually won me over. Indeed, even if you don’t believe in Santa Claus (I sure never did), it doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy Christmas, in the contrary, and I always loved this holiday. Eventually, the whole point of this movie was not if Santa Claus was real or not or if Kris Kringle was actually really Santa Claus or not, this movie was actually mostly about the Christmas spirit. I especially enjoyed this segment during which Macy’s owner discovered that the most profitable way to manage a store is by actually helping their customers, even if it meant sending them to their competitors. Of course, their best wild card was Edmund Gwenn who was just so pitch-perfect in this role. Without him, I’m not sure if the movie would have really worked, he was deservedly praised for his performance and, so far, he is the only actor to have ever won an Academy Award for playing Santa Claus. The fact that the lovely Maureen O'Hara was involved also definitely helped, even if the change of heart made by her character was probably too abrupt.  On the other hand, how it was handled with Susan Walker (I didn’t recognize Natalie Wood at all by the way) was much more subtle and so well done. Sure, the whole trial thing was rather silly and, above all, Granville Sawyer was a lame cartoonish bad guy but I understand that they needed to have some conflict at some point. Anyway, to conclude, even if I don’t think it is really a masterpiece, I have to admit that it is easily one of the best Christmas movies I have seen and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.