Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: New Year Edition

Wonderland Burlesque's 

Let's All Go To The Movies

New Year Edition

Today's Let's All Go To The Movies post concerns itself with the big screen's take on that biggest night and day of every year... New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

The festivities of the night before and the settling in of reality the next day create the kind of backdrops fraught with dramatic and comedic possibilities. One's experience grappling with these back-to-back holidays is as individualistic and unique from year to year as is it is universal in nature. 

With that in mind, let's take a look at these classic movies which ring out the old and bring in the new. 
 

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New Year's Eve

(1929)

(Unable to find a decent job, yet needing to provide for her younger brother, a young woman cast moral considerations aside and attempts to ingratiate herself with a gambler who has his eye on her. However, a pickpocket kills the gambler and when police arrive they find the young woman at the scene of the crime. Quickly jumping to conclusions, the police charge her with murder. Before the case goes to trial, the pickpocket falls to his death, revealing evidence which exonerates the woman who is then set free.)

(New Year's Eve is considered a 'lost' film, as no surviving print can be located. Produced and distributed by Fox Film Corporation, it stars Mary Astor and Charles Morton. It was unique, for, despite it being made in 1929, it was not a talkie, but a silent film with a music and sound effects soundtrack.)

(Mary Astor's career was nearly destroyed by scandal in 1936. Quite married, she had an affair with playwright George S. Kaufman and subsequently was named an adulterous wife by her ex-husband during a custody fight over their daughter. However, she persevered and went on to greater film success, eventually winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of a scheming concert pianist in 1941's The Great Lie - a film she was cast in at the insistence of the film's star, Bette Davis.)

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Happy New Year Sacrifice

(1956)

(Prior to the Revolution of 1911, a widow learns that her mother-in-law plans to sell her. Escaping, she makes her way to the Lu town. There, she procures work as a servant in the house of a great Lord, where she earns the appreciation of the Lord's wife, due to her diligence. Unfortunately, her mother-in-law tracks her down and forces her to marry a man who turns out to be honest, tolerant and kind. He has a son and a large debt he must pay. While paying off the debt, he dies of exhaustion and his son is eaten by wolves. Widowed for a second time, the woman is returned to the Lord's estate, where she is consumed by the thought of being torn limb from limb by Hades. To prevent this, she contributes her one-year earnings to the temple housing the god of earth. When family members of the house of the Lord learn of this, she is cruelly admonished, driven from the house on the night of the snowy blessing and perishes in the snow.)

(Based a short story by Chinese author Lu Xun, this film sustains the story's stately, but grim mood. Optically stunning, it deploys the actors as visual representations while unveiling the temperaments and motivations of the characters. In 1958, the film received the Silver Cap Prize at the Mexico International Film Festival.)

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New Year's Eve  Punch

(1960)

AKA: Silvesterpunsch

(Having thrown a successful party in May, a wealthy family wishes to throw a New Year's Eve party... with punch. Two of the sons are brigade leaders at a local chemical factory which is divided into two groups; those who fanatically follow the dictates of high culture and those who are sports fans. The family decides both elements are important to the occasion and the two opposing schools of thought must work together in order pull off a triumphant evening. It is decided that the program for the evening will include an ice skating spectacular featuring the patriarch's granddaughter. A member from the sports fans faction is drafted to coach her and, despite his rigorous and disciplined manner, the girl finds herself falling for him. Putting aside her feelings, she and the family work to convince her coach that elements of both high culture and sports are integral to a triumphant presentation. That evening, the ice show proves to be a big hit with both ideological sides, gulfing the rift between them as they ring in the new year.)

Made by the German government owned DEFA company, this East German musical was directed by Günter Reisch and stars Erich Franz, Friedel Nowack and Erika Dunkelmann. It was . It is a sequel to the 1959's The Punch Bowl.

Erika Dunelmann was an East German actress who was employed by the DEFA for the length of her career. She was a constant presence in their films and television programming from 1954 to 1980.

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Happy New Year

(1973)

AKA: La bonne année

(A gangster concocts a plan to rob a jewelry store during the off-season in Cannes. It proves successful, but he is caught and jailed. Released early under a New Year amnesty, he manages to regain his share of the heist while rekindling his romance with the owner of an antiques shop he met in the course of that crime.)  

(Much of the film was financed by advertising, particularly for the luxury jewelry company Van Cleef & Arpels, whose wares are paraded throughout the film.)

(Both Lino Ventura and Françoise Fabian would win Best Actor prizes at the San Remo Film Festival, while the film itself would walk away with the Prix Triomphe du Cinéma for 1973.)

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Rudolph's Shiny New Year

(1976)

(Depicts Rudolph's adventures as he searches for 'Happy', the baby New Year, who he must locate before midnight on New Year's Eve.)

(An American-Japanese Christmas and New Year's stop motion animated television special produced by Rankin/Bass Productions. A sequel to the 1964 special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, featuring a re-imagined Rudolph, this special premiered on ABC on December 10, 1976 and subsequently aired in Japan for the first time three years later.)

(It features voice work by three television legends, comedian Red Skelton, Morey Amsterdam from The Dick Van Dyke Show, and Batman's Riddler, Frank Gorshin.)

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New Year's Evil

(1980)

"Don't dare make New Year's resolutions... unless you plan to live!"

(During the telecast of a multi-time zone New Year's Eve punk/new wave music countdown, the show's vivacious hostess receives a call from a man who plans on killing someone each time the clock strikes midnight in the various time zones. As the body count grows, the police are brought in, but remain clueless as the killer satisfies his thirst for carnage.)

"A different kind of New Year's resolution."

"A celebration of the macbre..."

(This one stars Roz Kelly, who is best remembered as Pinky Tuscadero on TV's Happy Days, Kip Niven, Chris Wallace. and Grant Cramer.)

(I made The Boyfriend sit through this one. It's not great, but a lot of fun. Saddled with a weak screenplay, Kelly fails to sustain her energy level and focus throughout the film, though Kip Niven does a very credible job as the MacGyver-like serial killer. However, the evening's howls belong to the beatifically handsome, blonde-coiffed Grant Cramer who has no clue on how to act. He is given the oddest scenes, featuring dialogue that is supposed to hint at an incestuous relationship with his distant, unavailable mother, played by Kelly. While it fails miserably. I think the film possesses a rather intriguing plot and is ripe for a remake.)

 

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Happy New Year, Charlie Brown

(1986)

(Charlie Brown is obliged to attend Peppermint Patty's New Year's Eve party, even though he has to finish a book report on the novel War and Peace.)

(This was the 30th prime-time animated television special based on the characters featured in the popular comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz. It premiered on CBS on January 1, 1986.)

(Of note: this special is one of many where Violet and Patty are reduced to silent cameos. These two characters, along with others such as Shermy, Pig Pen, and Frieda the red-headed girl, were prominent in the earlier specials, such as 1966's It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and 1965's A Charlie Brown Christmas, but were phased out with the introduction of LGBTQ+ favorites, Peppermint Patty and Marcie.)

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Bloody New Year

(1987)

AKA: Time Warp Terror, Horror Hotel

"Should old acquaintance be forgot? Or just brutally murdered.)

 (In 1959, a group of partygoers vanish mysteriously while celebrating New Year's Eve at the Grand Island Hotel. Some twenty years later, a group of teenagers who are on a summer holiday on a remote island find themselves trapped in the haunted hotel which is still celebrating that same New Year's Eve... and killing anyone who gets in the way of a good time.)

 

(Filmed in Wales, the premise was inspired by the real-life failed disease control experiment which contaminated an entire Scottish island.)

(The director, Norman J. Warren,  described Bloody New Year as "a very terrible experience for me; in fact it turned out to be a bloody nightmare. We had the wrong producers on that film and they didn't know anything about horror. So the film lacks in every department and by the end of it, my heart just wasn't in it." It seems the producers "wanted to make the film cheaply and terribly quick," negatively impacting the music and sound effects. Warren was also critical of the music used in the film, stating that it "just doesn't work. On the second day of dubbing, I must confess I gave up on the film. I'd run out of fight, and just sat there and let them go through the motions." His experiences while making Bloody New Year were so horrendous that he never made another film.)

(The film features seven original tunes by the band Cry No More.)

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Happy New Year

(1987)

"Peter Falk is one in a million... and three of a kind.)

(A couple of aging thieves wish to score on last heist before they retire. They swoop into ritzy Palm Beach, Florida with their eyes on a Harry Winston jewelry store. Utilizing a variety of disguises, while posing as rich old men and women, they enact their elaborate plan, but when one of them falls for the owner of a neighboring antique store - things get very complicated, very quickly.)

(The screenplay is based on the 1973 French film, La bonne année and the director of the original, Claude Lelouch, has a cameo as a man on a train.)

(Nominated for an Academy Award in 1988 for Best Makeup, it lost to Harry and the Hendersons. Bill Conti. of Rocky fame, composed the score and produced a cover of the song classic, I Only Have Eyes For You performed by The Temptations and is featured extensively throughout the film.)

(Falk's character shows up disguised as a doddering Palm Beach socialite and the socialite's flirtatious, battleship-shaped sister.)

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Merry Christmas... Happy New Year

(1989)

AKA: Buon Natale... buon anno, Joyeux Noël, bonne année.

(A devoted couple who have been married for 40 years lack the finances to remain together, forcing them to live separately at the homes of their two daughters. Lonely, they often talk on the phone while occasionally enjoying secret trysts in hotel rooms. When a family vacation to Rome sweeps away his wife, the husband burglarizes his son-in-law's apartment in order to obtain funds enough to join her.)

(Based on the novel with the same name by Pasquale Festa Campanile, this Italian comedy/drama co-produced with France and directed by Luigi Comencini, was awarded a Silver Ribbon for Best Actress.) 

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New Year's Day

(1989)

(A man returns to his sublet apartment only to find that the previous tenants, three offbeat young women, are still living there under the mistaken belief that they have the apartment until the end of New Year's Day.)

(This is the final film in a trilogy of autobiographical films directed by Henry Jaglom. The first was 1985's Always, followed by 1987's Someone to Love. The screenplay for this film consisted of a visually daunting flow-chart of ideas circled and connected to each other, the center of which was written 'New Year's Day (Time to Move On)'. Typical of Jaglom's other films, the actors were left to improvise all the dialogue.)

(David Duchovny and Maggie Jakobson/Wheeler, who is best remembered as Chandler's squeaky voiced girlfriend on Friends, were in a real life relationship during filming. Much to Jaglom's surprise, this film was chosen as the official American selection at the Venice Film Festival in 1990.) 

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And that's all for now.

Tune in next week, 

Same time, same channel.

New Year's Day - Zeraphine