It's not as memorably moralistic as It's A Wonderful Life, not as likeably low-key as The Bishop's Wife, not even in the same class as the agreeably B-grade Holiday Affair. It suffers from uninspired direction, overly familiar dynamics, and see-through sentimentality. And yet, like the aforementioned trio, White Christmas transcends it flaws and finds its way on to everyone's Holiday must-see list. To its credit, this is less a matter of Christmas being a time of forgiveness than of the film containing a sufficient percentage of memorable moments.
The film had its genesis in, of course, the Bing Crosby chart topper of World War Two, the blockbuster bittersweet ballad that aspired to capture the home-for-the-holidays yearning of men fighting overseas. Hence, when the Korean conflict began heating up, it was a sure bet that Crosby's classic would soon be resonating with a new generation of war-minded audiences; what could make more sound financial sense than a re-launching of the song in a bright new cinematic package?
The original thought was to re-team Crosby with Fred Astaire, the pair behind the film that had introduced the Irving Berlin hit in Holiday Inn. When Astaire dropped out, it was decided to make his part a more comic one, and sites were set on Donald O'Connor. O'Connor took ill, and Paramount turned to one of its goldmines, Danny Kaye, perfectly willing to take second billing due to his undying admiration for Bing.
Crosby and Kaye (for the two or three of you reading this who may not have seen the film) play a song and dance team who pursue a pair of performing sisters - Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney - to an inn in Vermont, an establishment run, in the high-coincidence mode of the Studio Era, by their old, beloved wartime superior. Snow is in short and business hurting. So the boys - when not sorting out romantic complications- resort to that movie musical cure-all: putting on a show.
White Christmas was supposed to be Crosby's vehicle all the way, of course, but Kaye, though he is given few comic moments, shines just as brightly. It's a marvel to watch with what facility he abandons his nervy, bandy-legged style when he dances, and White Christmas presents some of the best dancing he has ever committed to film. He's as lithe as tossed tinsel in The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing (one of the three songs especially written for the film by Berlin), and as mechanically magic as a well-crafted wind-up toy in the Martha Graham parody They're Doing Choreography.
Vera-Ellen, with that impossibly small waist and those thin, powerful legs, also enjoys some of the best numbers of her too short career (this was her penultimate film.) And Crosby and Clooney, who benefit from a mutual melancholy and the ability to sing in the same key, croon compatibly.
White Christmas was the first film ever shot in VistaVision, one of the many devices of the early fifties aimed at luring audiences away from television. Unlike gimmicks such as Cinemascope, in which theatre owners had to install new screens - often by removing seats - VistaVision required no such renovations. Instead, productions were shot on a larger film surface, and thus the film, though it had to be projected horizontally, could be played in almost any aspect ratio.
Did all of this - the Crosby tune, the addition of Kaye, the soldier angle and the new visual gimmick - turn the trick? And how! White Christmas was the box office champion of 1954.
Like a Christmas potluck dinner, the film is better in parts than it is as a whole. So choice are those parts, however, that you develop an appetite for them year after year.
