SNOWTIME: MY 10 FAVOURITE FILMS / CLASSIC MOVIES ROUND-UP

SNOWTIME: MY 10 FAVOURITE FILMS

3.3.23

Spring is on its way soon, but it's still winter and March can be unpredictable weather-wise. Although there is little chance of snow falling where I live in Spain (close to Valencia) and the weather forecast seems to point towards summery temperatures in the coming week and beyond, I thought it would be nice to list some of my favourite films set (partly or entirely) in wintertime (with snow falling). I came up with the idea for this post because of the list challenge on Letterboxd (here). Since I would like to increase my additional posts on the blog in 2023 (this year being the 5th anniversary of my blog) and a list post is a fairly easy thing to put together, I thought I might join the fun.

To be eligible for this list, the film in question has to meet two criteria: it has to be a film that I love and snow has to play an important role in the film. Or, it has to have at least one significant snow scene incorporated in the story. I also wanted to make a varied list, so not only feel-good Christmas films, but films from different genres and different decades.

Some titles on this list immediately came to mind, for some I had to do a quick search. Other films that have snow scenes in them (not including Christmas films) but didn't make the list are (among others): Lucky Star, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Little Women (1949), My Reputation, The Searchers, Dark Victory, Track of the Cat, Day of the Outlaw, Nightfall, Young at Heart, On Moonlight Bay, Sun Valley Serenade, The Moon's Our Home, The Magnificent Ambersons, Spellbound, I Met Him in Paris, The Frozen North, Lost Horizon, The Mortal Storm and Will Penny. No doubt there are many many more.

So let's get on with the list (in no special order of preference).

1. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)

First film that came to mind was It's a Wonderful Life, one of my all-time favourite films, with James Stewart playing George Bailey, who's on the verge of committing suicide and is saved by an angel. He's shown what life would look like if he hadn't been born. Snow is a central character in the film, capturing the beauty of a winter's night in the fictional town of Bedford Falls. I found this great article online, telling how director Frank Capra wasn't satisfied with the cheap fake snow usually deployed on film sets. Because of the material used (white-painted cornflakes) with its crunching quality, dialogue was often lost when actors walked on the snow-covered sets and had to be overdubbed afterwards. Capra (trained as an engineer) was determined to develop artificial snow that looked close to the real thing. (See the article link above for more technical details). I love the famous scenes of Jimmy Stewart standing on the bridge in his hour of despair, ready to jump, and then his joyous return to Bedford Falls, running down the street while wishing all the buildings a Merry Christmas, and it's unthinkable to picture these scenes without the snow.

2. THE GOLD RUSH (1925)

Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush, where Chaplin's character plays a prospector looking for gold in Alaska, immediately brings to mind images of a snow storm and a snow-covered landscape. One also instantly pictures the famous shot of the little cabin balancing dangerously on the edge of a rock, suspended in the void. Apparently Chaplin used a model for the cabin and the scene was shot on the Klondike-set, built on the stages and backlot of the Chaplin Studio, with fake snow made of salt and flour. While it wasn't possible to shoot everything on location, Chaplin managed to do some location shooting in and around Truckee, and shot some genuine snow-laden scenes (there was even a genuine blizzard hitting the location). The scene where the prospectors slowly move up the snowy and steep incline was filmed on the slopes of Mount Lincoln in the Sierra Nevada. Hundreds of extras (to play the prospectors) were recruited in Sacramento and transported by train. The local Truckee Ski Club helped with creating the lengthy path where the procession of prospectors moved. I really love The Gold Rush. It's a wonderful mix of comedy and drama, there are funny slapstick scenes as well as heartfelt moments, and visually it's one of Chaplin's best films. It owes a lot to the snowy images.

3. ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1951)

On Dangerous Ground is a 1951 film noir-melodrama starring Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino, directed by Nicholas Ray. I recently rewatched this film and loved it even more than the first time I saw it. Ryan plays a tough city cop who is sent to a snowy mountain town to help the local sheriff solve a murder case, and then his outlook on life is changed by meeting blind Lupino. The scenes in the countryside were shot in Colorado on three different locations (Granby, Grand Lake and Tabernash). The wintery images are real and the landscape looks beautiful in its barrenness and desolation, emphasising the loneliness of the main characters.

4. CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT (1945)

I want to include another Christmas film where snow is a principal character. I love Christmas in Connecticut, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan, with the setting of the farmhouse and the snow giving all kinds of holiday vibes. The most memorable snow scene concerns a romantic sleigh ride. When Stanwyck and Morgan attend a community dance and walk outside to continue their conversation, they seat themselves in a sleigh that's parked outside, and all of a sudden the horse wanders off with them. According to IMDB trivia, 'the entire "runaway sleigh ride" sequence was filmed in soundstages on the Warner Brothers backlot, with snow drifts simulated by soap flakes.' It's a great scene and Barbara looks lovely.

5. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)

Thinking of classic films set in snowy landscapes, one cannot overlook David Lean's epic love story Doctor Zhivago, starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie, based on Boris Pasternak's novel of the same title. It almost doesn't get better than the icy winter palace with its snowy surroundings. With the book banned in the Soviet Union, Lean couldn't film there and looked for other locations. The weather forecast in Spain promised snow so Lean chose Spain (having shot part of Lawrence of Arabia in Spain), but the forecast failed and it was the warmest winter in Spain in 50 years! Some scenes had to be shot in interiors with fake snow where production designer Eddie Fowlie created snow from tons of white marble dust. Also some winter scenes were filmed in the summer months with high temperatures. The entire Moscow set was built outside Madrid, while other winter sequences were filmed in Finland and Canada. But the jewel in the crown of Lean's production design team was the ice palace at the Varykino estate. Devised by set designer John Box and executed by Eddie Fowlie, the ice palace was built in the Madrid studio and the set was dressed with frozen beeswax. First they covered the furniture with hundreds of rolls of cellophane and then covered them with dripped wax, perfect for creating icicles. I love the ice palace! It's such a wonderful and magical place. I was very fortunate to see this great and famous classic on the big screen twice, one time at the Eye Film Institute in Amsterdam and also at the Filmoteca in Barcelona.

6. WAY DOWN EAST (1920)

In D.W. Griffith's Way Down East, Lillian Gish plays an innocent small-town girl who is seduced and tricked into a fake marriage by an unscrupulous womaniser. He gets her pregnant and the child dies. She finds a job as a maid at the country farm of a squire, where she attracts the attention of the squire's son, played by Richard Barthelmess. It's a melodramatic story, even for 1920's filmgoers a tough one to swallow, so Griffith was determined to show the public something authentic. "Audiences want to see a real blizzard, not a sub-title with a two sentence description. If this film was going to work, the audiences wanted to see the real thing. Otherwise, whatever we did would be laughable", said Gish. Apparently, at the opening night in New York, the audience roared with laughter, until the ice sequence. When Gish's tortured character walks into a blizzard, cast out of the squire's home, collapses in the snow and falls down on an ice floe in the river, these are real images and not special effects. The ice floats downstream towards the falls, while Richard Barthelmess in a fur coat jumps from ice floe to ice floe, in order to save Gish from death. (Barthelmess would not make that picture again, no matter how much money the producer would be willing to pay, considering the risks he took jumping from ice floe to the next.) The climactic sequence was filmed on location in a real storm, where Gish suffered for art's sake, beyond the call of cinematic duty. It was her own idea to drape her hair and hands in the river, and Griffith gladly agreed. In her autobiography The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me, Gish describes the climactic ice-floe scene: "Mr. Griffith intended to shoot all the exterior scenes outdoors, including the blizzard. He wouldn’t be satisfied with the fake fury of a studio storm. (….) The blizzard finally struck in March. (....) At one time my face was caked with a crust of ice and snow, and icicles like little spikes formed on my eyelashes, making it difficult to keep my eyes open." Way Down East is now mainly remembered for the ice-floe sequence, and seriously .... just thinking about it makes me shiver with cold.

7. SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS (1954)

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is one of my favourite musicals. Fortunately it has a couple of snowy scenes and I can include it on this list. The snow is actually a plot device and sets the story in motion. The Pontipee brothers have their eyes set on the girls they met at the barn dance, then decide to kidnap them after hearing Howard Keel, their eldest brother, tell the story of The Sobbin' Women. They trigger an avalanche in the Echo Pass, causing the girls to be trapped at their place and preventing the townspeople from coming after them. They have to wait till Spring, but do the girls still want to go back or have they warmed up to their captors? Two songs are sung in the snow: Lonesome Polecat by the brothers and Spring, Spring, Spring by the girls (partly set in the snow). Though director Stanley Donen wanted to make the film on location in Oregon (where the story is set) and show the changing of the seasons, there was no budget for it and he had to make do with the painted backdrops and fake snow. Apparently Donen hated it, and no doubt location shooting would have enhanced the quality of the production, but do we really care that the snow is fake? This musical is pure bliss with the wonderful songs, dances and performances. A must-see!

8. SWING TIME (1936)

Swing Time is another musical I love. In fact, of all the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers films, this one is my favourite, together with The Gay Divorcee. The story is appealing and this has great dance and song numbers. My favourite musical numbers of the film are two songs without any dancing, The Way You Look Tonight and A Fine Romance. The Way You Look Tonight has Astaire sitting and singing at the piano while Ginger stands beside him with a head full of shampoo (unaware of this fact and totally embarrassed as she realises this). But it's thanks to A Fine Romance that the film has earned a spot on this list. Not only is this a great song but it's set in the snow (undoubtedly fake) and looks beautiful. A Fine Romance is composed by Jerome Kern and has lyrics written by Dorothy Fields. It was first published in 1936 and especially written for this film, sung by Fred and Ginger. I love it so much!

9. WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954)

It's not so difficult to guess why White Christmas is on this list, and yes, I love this musical which I have seen numerous times since childhood and I can practically dream the content and dialogue. It's not so much the presence of snow that's noteworthy but more the lack of snow for most of the film's runtime. Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye's former army General (Dean Jagger) runs a ski-lodge in Vermont, but due to the lack of snow he's now in financial trouble. So what better way to help the old man than to bring their whole Broadway show to Vermont? Yet before this all happens Crosby and Kaye sing a lovely song called Snow on the train to Vermont, together with Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen, and they all end up singing White Christmas at the film's finale, when the first snowflakes start falling. It may not come as a surprise that the snow is fake, but I think a lot of people don't know that the beautiful finale was created with snow made of asbestos (at least I didn't know), and the people involved in the making of the film weren't aware of the dangers back then.

10. ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955)

All That Heaven Allows with Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman is the last film on my list, one that's not entirely set in wintertime but a film that sees the seasons change and beautifully so. The whole aesthetic of the film is amazing, e.g. autumn is gorgeously depicted in deep orange hues. But I think wintertime is the most important season here. Around Christmas time comes the most poignant scene where Wyman's children gift their mother a TV-set and the reflection of Wyman in the television screen is heartbreaking. Yet wintertime also brings change. When Hudson's character takes a fall in the (obviously artificial) snow and falls into a coma, Wyman goes to his house to take care of him and all ends well. The cinematography by Russell Metty is gorgeous, and the snowy scene with the deer outside the window is dreamlike and beautiful.

So there you have it! 10 favourite films set (partly or entirely) in the snow. Now let's wait till Spring arrives!

(The film posters below are arranged in order of release date, earliest first.)

PHOTOS/GIFS IN THIS POST FROM TOP TO BOTTOM:

*On Dangerous Ground with Ida Lupino;

*Doctor Zhivago with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie;

*Seven Brides for Seven Brothers with Howard Keel, Jane Powell and brides and brothers; (screenshot by me)

*It's a Wonderful Life with James Stewart;

*It's a Wonderful Life, on set with James Stewart;

*The Gold Rush with Charlie Chaplin;

*The Gold Rush, on set with Charlie Chaplin; (2 photos)

*On Dangerous Ground with Ida Lupino;

*On Dangerous Ground with Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan;

*On Dangerous Ground with Robert Ryan and Ward Bond;

*Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan;

*Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan and Reginald Gardiner;

*Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan;

*Doctor Zhivago with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie; (2 photos)

*Doctor Zhivago, winter palace set;

*Way Down East with Lillian Gish;

*Way Down East with Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess;

*Way Down East with Lillian Gish;

*Seven Brides for Seven Brothers with Howard Keel and Jane Powell;

*Seven Brides for Seven Brothers with the brides; (screenshot by me)

*Seven Brides for Seven Brothers with the brothers; (screenshot by me)

*Swing Time with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire; (1 photo & 2 gifs)

*White Christmas with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen, singing Snow;

*White Christmas with Dean Jagger welcoming snow;

*White Christmas with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen;

*All That Heaven Allows with Rock Hudson;

*All That Heaven Allows with Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman. (2 photos)