30 Movies to Get You Through the Holidays

On Christmas Eve, the Danish singer Anna Sorensen (Diane Kruger) is brought to a support area to sing for German officers and the crown prince, but she insists on being taken to the front lines. She says she wants to sing for the ordinary troops, but her real hope is to see Sprink, her lover. Reaching the lines, she is surprised to find that thousands of little Christmas trees have been supplied by Berlin and form a decoration on top of the German trenches.

The Scots and the French are equally surprised by the trees, and by the sound of singing as Sprink and Sorenson sing “Silent Night” and “Adeste Fideles.” Slowly, tentatively, soldiers begin to poke their heads up over the ramparts, and eventually they lay down their arms and join in the cratered No Man’s Land to listen to the singing, and then to the bagpipes of the Scots, and then to celebrate mass. The next morning, Christmas Day, there is even a soccer game. Precious bits of chocolate are shared. And they bury their dead, whose bodies have been rotting between the lines.

These men have much in common with one another. They come from the same kinds of homes, went to the same kinds of schools, and worship the same kinds of gods. They are required to fight, and most of them are required to die. In a remarkable moment of common interest, they share information about plans for artillery attacks, and all gather in one trench while the other is shelled, then switch trenches for the response. This is treason, I suppose.

Joyeux Noel has its share of bloodshed, especially in a deadly early charge, but the movie is about a respite from carnage, and it lacks the brutal details of films such as Paths of Glory, A Very Long Engagement, and, from later wars, Saving Private Ryan and Platoon. Its sentimentality is muted by the thought that this moment of peace actually did take place, among men who were punished for it and who mostly died soon enough afterward. But on one Christmas they were able to express what has been called, perhaps too optimistically, the brotherhood of man.

Little Women ½

PG, 115 m., 1994

Winona Ryder (Jo March), Gabriel Byrne (Friedrich Bhaer), Trini Alvarado (Meg March), Susan Sarandon (Mrs. March). Directed by Gillian Armstrong. Produced by Denise Dinovi. Written by Robin Swicord. Based on the book by Louisa May Alcott.

This is a surprisingly sharp and intelligent telling of Louisa May Alcott’s famous story, and not the soft-edged children’s movie it might appear. There’s a first-rate cast, with Susan Sarandon as the mother; Winona Ryder as the tomboy, Jo; Trini Alvarado as Meg; Kirsten Dunst and Samantha Mathis as Amy, younger and older; and Claire Danes as Beth. As the girls are courted by their neighbor (Christian Bale) and his tutor (Eric Stoltz), and as Jo comes under the influence of a German professor (Gabriel Byrne), the film is true to Alcott’s story about how all of life seems to stretch ahead of us when we’re young, and how, through a series of choices, we choose and narrow our destiny.

The very title summons up preconceptions of treacly do-gooders in a smarmy children’s story, and some of the early shots in Little Women do little to discourage them: In one of the first frames, the four little women and their mother manage to arrange their heads within the frame with all of the spontaneity of a Kodak ad.

But this movie is not smarmy, not dogooding, and only a little treacly; before long I was beginning to remember, from many years ago, that Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women was a really good novel—one that I read with great attention.

Of course, I was 11 or 12 then, but the novel seems to have grown up in the meantime—or maybe director Gillian Armstrong finds the serious themes and refuses to simplify the story into a “family” formula. Little Women may be marketed for children and teenagers, but my hunch is it will be best appreciated by their parents. It’s a film about how all of life seems to stretch ahead of us when we’re young, and how, through a series of choices, we narrow our destiny.

The story is set in Concord, Massachusetts, and begins in 1862, in a winter when all news is dominated by the Civil War. The March family is on its own; their father has gone off to war. Times are hard, although it’s hard not to smile when we find out how hard: “Firewood and lamp oil were scarce,” we hear, while seeing the Marches living in what passes for poverty: a three-story colonial, decorated for a Currier and Ives print, with the cheerful family cook in the kitchen and the Marches sitting around the fire, knitting sweaters and rolling bandages.