Mood: ‘Corner Pocket’ by Count Basie
A Trio of Forgotten New Year’s Movies
There are not a lot of New Year’s movies that I am aware of, and this seems to be so with anyone I have asked over the years. In fact, really only one of the movies I will present here have any real direct connection with the time of year, two take place around that time of year and one just has the hour of Midnight important to it, but they have been my go-tos for such films.
The First Film: ‘After the Thin Man’, 1936
The second in the Thin Man series and taking place almost literally after then events in the first film (which almost made my list of forgotten Christmas movies), Nick and Nora return home for a quiet New Years to find a roaring party in full swing for their Welcome Home party, but no one in attendance seems to know them until they make it into the kitchen where the hired help recognize them. Immediately, Nora’s Aunt Katharine calls her to attend a dinner that requires the help Nick’s detective past, and that grudgingly as Nora’s rich family thinks him beneath them.
What follows is a traditional Whodunnit that is resolved by the ‘you’re all wondering why I brought you together’ reveal. It is a fun, irreverent film that shows it’s age in the time it was filmed, 1936, not the least of which is the amount of social drinking that Nick partakes in, keeping him seemingly half-potted throughout. It also happens to be one of James Stewart’s first movies!
The Second Film: ‘The Horn Blows at Midnight’, 1945
Other than the fact that the hour of Midnight is obviously important to the story, this really has nothing to do with New Year’s, but it is a fun comedy of it’s time.
Jack Benny plays Athanael, a trumpet-playing angel in the Heavenly Orchestra who has been tasked with the destruction of planet 339001 and it’s unruly inhabitants by, you guessed it, blowing his trumpet at the striking of Midnight. He is hounded by the fallen angels Osidro and Doremus who have become quite enamored of their hedonistic (at least in as much as a 40’s movie could get across) lifestyle as they try to thwart the End of the World. But, is it all a dream? 🤔
The Third Film: ‘The Hudsucker Proxy’, 1994
This is a Coen Brothers comedy in a slightly farcical vein, with Tim Robbins starring as Norville Barnes, a Muncie Indiana native and graduate who comes to the Big City looking to make it big in the business world, because he has an idea that he knows will make a big splash. ‘Y’know; for the kids!’
Difficult to explain in a few sentences, Norville finds himself in the vice-presidency of Hudsucker Industries, while the self-serving president Sydney J Mussberger (Paul Newman) let’s him run with his hairbrained idea, and eventually, his life possibly in ruins, Norville thinks about taking that Final Step…
This movie also has one of the best lines ever written, in my opinion, and spoken by Jennifer Jason-Leigh as ‘Amy Archer’:
“Only a nincompoop thinks he knows things about things he knows nothing about!”
That is is for now, there will be at least two more Days of Christmas posts…I mean, hey, it’s a magical time!
Be well, of good cheer and pax vobiscum!