If there’s one thing we like doing here at CrimeReads, it’s looking at pieces of pop culture that were not intended to be mysterious or in any way crime-related, then judging them as items of noir. Okay, first we like looking at crime fiction and evaluating it as crime fiction, but right after that, a close runner up, we like taking, say, a beloved modern-day Christmas classic like Love, Actually and finding and dissecting its dark, dark heart. It’s all part our mission and maxim: all good fiction is crime fiction. Or mystery fiction. Or possibly a thriller. Anyway in the lead-up to the holidays we’ve been reading and watching plenty of great stories.
Yesterday we had 10 Thrillers You Forgot Take Place During Christmas. (Those were the incidental Christmas movies.) Today, we’re looking at the Christmas classics themselves. And ranking them. Based on which one is the Most Noir. With any luck, you might get a new perspective on a few Christmas favorites. For the record, honorable mentions, movies that didn’t quite make the cut, include: Miracle on 34th Street (too syrupy); A Christmas Prince (too new); The Nightmare Before Christmas (trying too hard); Polar Express (same); Home Alone (beat out by the sequel); Scrooged (too 80s); White Christmas (too much song and dance—or maybe not enough). Those are solid movies, but they just can’t touch the true Christmas classic movies as noir.
Now, the “winners.” Here are the 10 Most Noir Christmas Classics Ever Made:
10. Love, Actually (2003)
Hugh Grant’s PM is obviously playing a very complex psychological game in order to distract the British public from the deal he’s making with the American President to host a black site somewhere in the Hebrides. That’s obvious. Also, Aurelia’s family is being awful casual and downright willing about a potential human trafficking situation. Don’t let the airport hugs distract you from the insidious story lurking just beneath the beautiful surface.
9. The Holiday (2006)
This is a classic Strangers on a Train type life switch / crime switch movie, when you get right down to it. Make no mistake about it: Cameron Diaz is in Surrey to kill Rufus Sewell’s rakish book editor, Jasper. Kate Winslet’s mission is pretty clear, too: Arthur has written his last screenplay. Enjoy that “lifetime achievement” award, buddy.
8. While You Were Sleeping (1995)
A mugging / attempted murder on a Chicago El platform is followed by a sustained and extreme gaslighting situation. Based on the novel by James M. Cain.
7. A Christmas Story (1983)
It’s the narrator—he’s as hardboiled as they come. When he says an eye’s gonna get shot out, that eye’s getting shot but good.
6. A Christmas Carol (1951)
Tiny Tim is as good as dead and no Christmas goose is going to bring him back, let’s get that straight up front, okay? In fact, all of us are dying, from the day we’re born—that’s the real message here—and the only thing that can give any of us even a little respite is the thought that our enemies, too, are right now in their beds, unable to sleep, the bearer of ridiculous, degrading pajamas, being tormented by an endless loop of visitors.
5. The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Another gaslighting / double identity situation turns what might have been a very pleasant bookstore cozy into a dark-hearted parable about life and death in the big city.
4. Home Alone 2 (1992)
Those pigeons aren’t gonna feed themselves. Christmas in Gotham never looked so noir.
3. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Judy Garland looks wistfully out the window while next to hear, a young girl’s heart breaks. And then: “Someday soon we all will be together / If the fates allow / Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow / So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.” Damn, Judy. That is cold.
2. A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
Charlie Brown searching for that Christmas tree is basically Philip Marlowe wading deeper and deeper into the abyss, only to register a haunting, cosmic scoff in the face of the everlasting oblivion. Plus, the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack is the tops.
1. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
What begins as a simple story about a life of squandered promise expands into a sprawling crime epic involving embezzlement, drunk and disorderly conduct, attempted cop killing, suicide by bridge, organized vice and corruption, shootouts in the streets of Pottersville, bystanders presumed dead, reckless endangerment involving public works (bridge again), and finally, a madman running through the hitherto quiet snowy streets of Bedford Falls. That beautiful final scene with the Bailey family and all the townsfolk can’t make us unsee all the wanton crime we’ve just witnessed in the two hours before. It’s a Wonderful Life is noir to the bone.
