A Christmas to Remember

This has got to be the best Christmas show ever. Years ago I came across this movie and loved it the first time. I thought it depicted the feeling of Christmas or of what Christmas is all about. I seen it again the next year and was able to tape it myself. Sadly, someone taped over it and I haven't seen it on TV since. What a shame this one fell through the cracks, I can't believe they put the junk on that they do and not this movie. This one should be at the top just like Scrooge and all the rest. Every year I keep looking and hoping they put on this movie for Christmas, but they don't. I am trying to find one to buy, that's hard too. If there is anyone out there who has a copy I would really appreciate it if I could get a copy from you.

Virginia

This movie is not available on DVD unless one cuts it himself off a taped-from-TV videotape. It is an "old-fashioned" Christmas tale--others have summarized the setting about the young boy's being stuck with a very grumpy old grandpa. Its plot is very unusual and very sensitive, because it deals with harsh realities of LOSS that we all face. The characters in this extended family help each other, sometimes without meaning to help, find meaning in their lives and help lift heavy BURDENS and family secrets that have haunted them for years. I taped this movie off TV in 1993, and have NOT seen it on TV since, which is a shame--they should wipe that BB-gun-boy Christmas movie permanently off television and substitute this REAL Christmas movie for it and play it EVERY Christmas so that people who don't remember how to feel and love rediscover these cozy sentiments.

Tom Clarie

Almost as good as Christmas in Connecticut and Miracle on 34th Street, and I enthusiastically second the comments of my six predecessors. My point in writing is that I can vouch for the authenticity of sunshinevm.com, who sell a DVD of this movie at intermediate definition for $15 shipped. My copy arrived today---no crap up front to click past, just the show.

Although he was only 56 years old in this film, Jason Robards plays an older grandpa, Daniel Larson, to George Parry's Rusty McCloud. Eva Marie Saint plays grandma, Emma Larson, also in a role somewhat older than her 54 years. The two senior actors, both Oscar winners, were in demand and played in a number of family film roles, many made for TV, among their extensive films well into their senior years when many actors either retire or are no longer in demand.

Robards was coming off a series of four successful TV movies based on stories by Gale Rock, about growing up in a small town in Nebraska. It wasn't planned as a series to begin with, but the success of the 1972 holiday film, "The House Without a Christmas Tree" led to three more films, two with holiday themes.

This film is about a boy about 12 or 13 being sent from the city during the Great Depression to live on the farm with his grandparents, whom he apparently had not met before. Apparently the daughter had been estranged from her parents since she left the farm in Minnesota for Philadelphia and married. But, now, Mildred McCloud (played with a brief appearance by Joanne Woodward) and her husband can't find work to even be able to afford to feed three mouths. So, Mildred sends Rusty off to live for a time with her parents on the farm.

It's a good story that follows similar plots, but nothing on the level of the highly successful and very popular 1971 CBS TV film, "The Homecoming: A Christmas Story." Still, this makes for a nice family film over the holidays. It has a very nice twist for an ending that fits with the Christmas cheer.

Robards and Saint went on to make many more movies over the next 20 plus years.

Yes, this is what this film has been to me... an experience to remember. It was a sad period for my family, we had lost my cousin, very young, few months before then, and my aunt, her mother, was seriously ill, she actually died few months later (she was only 54)... So, there we all were, Christmas time, a silent mourning instead of Christmas carols and cheerful family unifications... And it was that very Christmas back in 1981 that Greek television showed this film which has haunted my dreams ever since... I don't really know what impression it would really make to me today, but I can not forget the feelings it woke up to me that day... The beyond any description tender and emotional story of the forever "lost" son, who "returns" to help his nephew cope with the treatment he gets from his grandfather and make his desperate father's dream come true,especially the scene of the son's phantom entering the church where everybody is waiting in great anxiety about what might had happened to the delayed in the snowstorm ones, and finally sings Christmas carols, reunited –at last- with his devastated father, just made me cry for long bitter hours right after. Actually, it still makes me cry, every time i recall it,though 30 years have passed since then. I know, one could say that it really didn't make any sense, and yes, the script was really balancing between realism and a fairytale... Still, i have never ever watched a film scratching so persistently my deeper feelings of sorrow and desperation,for i knew and know how hard it is to deal with loss, and it's only in films that hope is never lost...