It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

 "Why don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death?"

Yes, I know. I should have seen this film long before the run-in to my forty-seventh Christmas. At least I've seen it now. It's awesome, obviously.

What's striking on a first viewing is how very late in the film we get the bit where aspiring angel Clarence shows George how awful his community would be without him. We get nearly two hours of George, a nice guy- well, by 1946 standards- having his dreams of travel and architectural glory slowly crushed as he stays in the same town, putting others before himself and living a modest, humble life. Some of the scenes are quite distressing, not least his and Mary's honeymoon being ruined by the Wall Street Crash.

What's also striking is that the film disapproves of capitalism red in tooth and claw and insists that community matters far more than money, an important point for any age. Bedford Falls is a nice place: Pottersville is an obvious inspiration for Biff's changed 1985 of Back to the Future Part II.

Jimmy Stewart is, of course, the perfect leading man, the cast is superb with Lionel Barrymore, especially, engaging in some truly splendid chewing of the scenery, and the entire thing looks perfect. I'll even forgive the film, as someonewho knows, for its rather amusing total failure of realism in depicting George's deafness. As anti-Dickensian riffs on A Christmas Carol go, this is pretty much cinematic perfection.

Rear Window (1954)

 "We've become a race of Peeping Toms."

I last saw this film a scary number of years ago, and can't remember what I thought, although I seem to recall liking it. And yet... this is one of those films that is easy to admire but hard to love.

It's not that this isn't a masterpiece. The very concept is inspired- the claustrophobia and boredom of beng stuck in a two room apartment leads Jeff (a too old but neertheless excellent Jimmy Stewart) to spend his time spying on his neighbours, until he thinks he's witnessed a murder.

And there is such mastery in how the visuals are handled, from the design of the neighbourhood (deliberately complex, three-dimensional and amost Escher-like) to the moment where Thorwald eventually meets Jeff's gaze, and the tension that follows. The future Princes Grace of Monaco is superb, as is good old Hollywood stalwart Thelma Ritter. There's a rather nice theme running throughout of marital harmony or its absence.

And yet... it takes ages to get going and, clever though it is ad as charismatic as its stars may be, the film is just too slow for most of its length for the suspens to realy work: the concept ad execution don't really maage to fill the film's length.

Still, none of that takes away from the fact that this film is a super technical achievement.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

"I'm staying. And I'm not buying a gun either."

I don't know too much about Westerns; unless you count the ones by Akira Kurosawa I've only seen The Magnificent Seven, A Fistful of Dollars and Back to the Future Part III, and the first two of those were many years ago. But The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance has made a huge impression on me. It's the most profound experience I've had watching a film in recent months. I'm only vaguely aware of the tropes and themes of serious Westerns, but this film has so much subtext I hardly know where to begin. Plus it taught me the etymology of the word "dude", which apparently predates Bill and Ted by a century and a half. Who'd have thunk it?

Much of the film takes place in flashback and structurally would doubtlessly reward repeat viewings. Rance (a likeable and charismatic James Stewart), now a senator, returns with his wife Hallie to a town much changed by the advent of rail travel and the amenities it brings. They are there for the funeral of Tom Doniphon, a fascinating character; cue extended flashback.

A young Rance, travelling by the inevitable stagecoach, is moving west straight from law school. Immediately we have a character representing law and order moving towards an area synonymous with lawlessness, and this thematic tension informs the whole film; justice versus revenge. It's not the kind of cultural reference one usually associates with Westerns, I assume, but I'm reminded of Aeschylus' Oresteia, albeit with a much more ambiguous conclusion. But for now we simply observe Rance trying and failing to apply the rules he knows to his new environment. Liberty Valance will not, as we will see, be tried, convicted and imprisoned.

Rance's antithesis- and love rival- is Tom Doniphon, a hugely watchable and charismatic John Wayne- oh, and did his catchphrase "pilgrim", must beloved of Preacher, come just from this film? Tom is none too intellectual, very old-fashioned with the ladies to put it mildly, and at ease with the rough justice of the west. He's also obviously the alpha male, something which it seems at this point that Rance will never be.

Nevertheless, stubbornly law-abiding Rance begins to have an effect on the town, teaching literacy and generally acting as a mild civilising influence, even rousing the whole (male) town to exercise their franchise and vote in favour of statehood, which is clearly not so much a metaphor of a state of law and civilisation than, well, quite literally that. Men like Rance (and they are men at this time) have power in a state that they do not in a mere territory, and those like Valance, who thrive from lawlessness, are naturally prepared to use violence to prevent the end of their natural habitat.

Rance is slowly gaining in stature and confidence, though. It's precisely his civilising tendencies that lead Hallie to abandon alpha male Tom for him, a sure sign of the way the wind is blowing. But he inevitably ends up in a shootout with Valance... and inexplicably winning, seemingly abandoning all his principles. And yet, as we eventually discover in the film's big reveal, the shooter was in fact a hidden Tom. The character personifying rough justice eventually, despite misgivings, paves the coming of law and order. But he's yesterday's man, and all he can do is provide a future for others, not himself. He's a tragic yet compelling figure.

The flashback ends, we return to the present, and eberyone decides to ignore the inconvenient fact that Rance, who owes his popularity to having killed Valance and now feels quite firmly as though he belongs in a town which has now firmly adapted to his values, did no such thing. Everyone decides to ignore the truth and print the legend. But then, don't we all when it comes to the Old West?