Rewind, Review, and Re-Rate: ‘Christmas in Connecticut’: A Delightful Romp
Not Rated | 1h 41min | Comedy, Romance | 11 August 1945 (USA)
Before Christmas, why not see a buoyant, breezy comedy film that can be viewed by the entire family?
Directed by Peter Godfrey, “Christmas in Connecticut” stars Barbara Stanwyck as Elizabeth Lane, who writes a popular syndicated column called “Diary of a Housewife” for a major magazine. She’s set herself up as the epitome of the perfect housewife: She writes about her devoted husband and their baby, as well as her idyllic farm in Connecticut, complete with livestock. And of course, she’s a marvelous cook who just loves to share her recipes with her readers. The only thing is that she’s a total fraud.
I grew up on a steady stream of ’80s and ’90s comedies about how hilarious it would be if men had to parent their own kids. So you can imagine my surprise when I flipped on TCM a few years ago and discovered a romantic comedy from the 1940s that featured its dreamy male lead bathing a baby with the confidence of a well-practiced babysitter. There’s humor at play he’s taking over for a woman who’s merely pretending to be a mother and the whole sequence has the high stakes of a false-identity farce. But the laughs come from the goofy situation, rather than at the expense of either of the characters. Instead, his natural nurturing abilities are part of his romantic appeal and her complete incompetence is part of her quirky charm. It’s a subtly progressive scenario that honestly wouldn’t feel out of place in a contemporary rom-com.