For a guy whose middle name is Christmas, you’d think I’d show a Christmas movie. For someone who is completely indifferent to modern superhero movies– just ask me what I think of your “multiverse”– you’d think I’d avoid the entire genre completely…
And yet… our December film is Superman. If that strikes you as curious or if you just want to know how that came to be, read on. Just don’t ask me afterward, “So you’re not playing a Christmas movie?”
Over the last several years, the Pickwick Theatre Classic Film Series has done justice to Christmas. (We’ve even been visited by Santa!) We’ve shown some of the very best Christmas movies: White Christmas, Holiday Inn, Miracle on 34th Street, Babes in Toyland, even Home Alone. I would love to play the new 4K restoration of It’s a Wonderful Life. (I booked a beautiful 35mm print of IAWL when I ran the LaSalle Bank Theatre in 2003.) However, as long as Liberty Bank sponsors free showings of the film in December, I won’t be creating an event around IAWL. And I don’t repeat films– there are just too many others to get to– so if you missed our showing of Miracle on 34th Street…
There are certainly other wonderful Christmas movies out there like Christmas in Connecticut or The Bishop’s Wife, but neither would draw a crowd big enough to justify showing it (and in 2021, we need money-makers to recover from a global pandemic). There are other titles that would be popular, like Gremlins or Elf (which I’ve never actually seen), even Die-Hard … but I thought I’d take a step back from the holiday theme and play something else. We’ll return to Christmas on the silver screen in 2022. Instead, we’ll see a movie that takes full advantage of the big screen, a genuine epic that has been on the programming wheel since the Pickwick converted to the Mega-Theatre two years ago.
I’m not a fan of superhero movies, but only in a general sense as it relates to the contemporary scene. I’m not emotionally invested in the whole MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) and I think the recent DC Universe movies– Christopher Nolan excluded– are not even passable entertainment. The market is simply inundated now with this comic book mythology. And Disney can’t produce their Disney+ streaming shows fast enough. There’s a demand for it– just not from me.
Maybe, instead, parents today could take their kids back to a time when we had the real Superman to inspire us, and he did so in a way that no Avenger can. There was a time when I trusted the hero on the screen, when I believed a man could fly (or at least, appear to on the screen), when I marveled at the sheer spectacle of the film-making process. Now, of course, everything is CG effects, and it doesn’t really matter who plays what part. Life and death in these films doesn’t really have any meaning with their nonchalance towards violence; the films are often filled with mass casualties and collateral damage. (Refer to 2013’s Man of Steel.) The lines between right and wrong have become blurred– the morality of heroism even questioned.
Times have certainly changed since I was a kid in the early 1980s. We live in a society that is living through a problematic era– an era where even the movie heroes have become dark and troubled or filled with angst. Every day we see division and moral compromise in the world outside the theatre. In the news, there are expanding global conflicts as well as mistrust in our own government. A general lack of civility pervades society. Some factions don’t even recognize reality– or truth anymore. Everything is questioned or rewritten. Even the motto “Truth, justice and the American way” has been modified to “… a better tomorrow.”
But in the eyes of a five-year-old, there was a movie hero who did not change. He was that comforting emblem of strength and consistency– someone who was a legitimate superhero to me, someone who embodied the best in each of us. You believed in what he had to say. We cheered for him, the hero, not the villain he was opposing. I am referring, of course, to Christopher Reeve who, through a tragic accident, became a hero in real life and gave hope to thousands suffering from disabilities. Reeve always seemed genuine on-screen: honest, good… decent. You don’t see that quality convincingly portrayed too often. He cared about the people he was saving. And he was such a wonderful actor, too. Since Reeve’s last appearance as Superman in 1987, there have been many caped mannequins who followed, but none approached the legacy that Reeve left behind. Like George Reeves before him, Chris made a lasting impression on an entire generation of kids.
Maybe this Christmas, the best present is simply a reminder of what decency is rather than just another merry trip down Jingle Bell Way.
Superman: The Movie was released on December 15, 1978. We are showing Superman on December 15, 2021. The choice of date was deliberate. This past year we lost yet another star from the film, Ned Beatty, as well as the man who helmed the entire production, Richard Donner. We are remembering both with this screening.
Over forty years later, I feel that Superman is still the greatest superhero movie of them all. The original film is a stirring, uplifting spectacle with the screen’s greatest Superman.
The Pickwick Theatre has certainly been struggling through a pandemic these past 20 months, but now we turn to the Man of Steel to rescue us at the box office…
To be continued…
~MCH