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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 93
Released: November 8, 2005 |
| Our Price: $5.74 |
| Used Price: $5.46 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Journalist Elizabeth Lane is one of the country's most famous food writer. In her columns, she describes herself as a hard working farm woman, taking care of her children and being an excellent cook. But this is all lies. In reality she is an umarried New Yorker who can't even boil an egg. The recipes come from her good friend Felix. The owner of the magazine she works for has decided that a heroic sailor will spend his christmas on *her* farm. Miss Lane knows that her career is over if the truth comes out, but what can she do?
Description of Christmas in Connecticut:
Christmas in Connecticut is a holiday film that plays 365 days of the year. Barbara Stanwyck gives a brilliant, sardonic performance as Elizabeth Lane, a columnist for Smart Housekeeping magazine, whose enticing descriptions of the exquisite meals she prepares for her husband and baby on their bucolic Connecticut farm earns her fame as "America's Best Cook." A writer, she is; a cook, she is not. As she types the words, "From my living room window, as I write, the good cedar logs cracking on the fire..." the view is of clothes flapping on the line outside her bachelorette Manhattan apartment. An able supporting cast keeps her lie on life support: her editor, her stuffy and detestable architect suitor, and the wonderful "Uncle" Felix (S.Z. Sakall), an English-garbling Hungarian chef who provides the recipes that fill her column.
Cut to Jefferson Jones, a sailor adrift at sea for weeks after his destroyer is torpedoed. Memories of the food described in Lane's columns are central to his survival. After his rescue, as he's recuperating in a naval hospital, a marriage-minded nurse thinks she might nudge Jones to the altar if he could only experience a real domestic Christmas. And it just so happens that she was nurse to the grandchild of Alexander Yardley, the wealthy and powerful publisher of --you guessed it--Smart Housekeeping magazine. And so, she pens the letter that could unravel Lane's carefully constructed fraud. She writes to Yardley asking that Jones be included in America's ultimate Christmas--the one to be held at the Lane family farm in Connecticut. The pompous Yardley (ably portrayed by Sidney Greenstreet) believes the Lane myth and instantly sniffs a story that will send his magazine's circulation skyrocketing. And staring down a lonely holiday, he decides to join the Lanes for Christmas on the farm, too. Now, all Lane has to do is come up with a farm. And a husband. And let's not forget the baby. Christmas in Connecticut is classic screwball entertainment of the best kind, with its on-target skewering of social convention and house-of- cards-about-to-tumble tension: a perfect farcical vision of domestic blitz. --Susan Benson
Christmas in Connecticut Reviews:
a wonderful holiday film--and a perennial favorite 
2009-12-20 - Christmas In Connecticut is a fine holiday classic film with great performances by Barbara Stanwyck, Sidney Greenstreet, Dennis Morgan, S. K. Sakall, Joyce Compton--and several others, too! The plot is interesting and it moves along at a very good pace; there's lots of comedy and light-hearted action that lets this movie pack a really enjoyable punch! The cinematography works well and the choreography shines in the square dancing scene as well as the scene in a New York City restaurant. The script was very good, too.
When the film begins, we meet Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) who, with a little help from her friend "Uncle" Felix (S. K. Sakall) and her coworker Dudley (Robert Shayne), has managed to con magazine magnate Alexander Yardley (Sidney Greenstreet). She has Yardley, her top manager boss, believing that she is actually living on a farm in Connecticut, cooking incredible recipes with her husband and living the perfect, clean cut lifestyle. In actuality, however, Elizabeth rents a relatively small Manhattan apartment and she's very much ambivalent about her boyfriend John Sloan (Reginald Gardiner). In fact, Elizabeth can't even boil an egg--her recipes come to her courtesy of her good friend "Uncle" Felix who runs a restaurant!
It isn't long before the action starts. Yardley gets a letter from a nurse who works in a military hospital, Mary Lee (Joyce Compton). One of the people she nurses is a man who had to survive eighteen days without food in a life raft after his battleship was sunk by an enemy torpedo during World War Two. (Look for a nice cameo by Frank Jenks as the serviceman's buddy, Sinkewicz). Yardley instantly realizes that this would be a great publicity event if Elizabeth would host Christmas dinner at her farm in Connecticut for this poor serviceman--and this, of course, creates a huge crisis for Elizabeth who can't say no to her boss!
Of course, there are good and bad things that come Elizabeth's way as the plot unfolds. Her boyfriend John again proposes; and if she says "yes" he'll let Elizabeth use his own farm in Connecticut as hers for that Christmas dinner. Elizabeth doesn't love John and he knows that; but John thinks she will change her mind slowly but surely after they're married. Another complication is that Alexander Yardley invites himself to her Christmas dinner--and that serviceman, Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan), turns out to be quite a guest, to say the least!
I won't give plot spoilers but I will say that every minute of this film is captivating. It's so well done; I think you'll like it. It truly has a universal appeal. In addition, there's a bonus entitled "A Star in the Night."
Christmas In Connecticut is a perennial favorite for many good reasons: the acting; the comedy and the fast moving plot with characters you can truly like. I highly recommend this film for fans of the actors in this movie; and fans of classic movies in general would do well to add this to their collections.
A Christmas Favorite
2009-12-05 - This movie is always fun to watch. Barbara Stanwyck was a really talented comedienne, and all the other actors did a great job as well. It's a trip back in time, a nice break from our hectic modern world.
Favorite line: When her "borrowed" baby starts to cry, Elizabeth announces, "It must be time for...something !"
Classic Christmas
2009-12-04 - A true classic for the Christmas Season. It ranks right up there with It's A Wonderful Life and Miracle On 34th Street. Grab yourself a mug of hot chocolate, sit back and be ready to enjoy this movie for the season!
Another DVD with no Audio 
2009-12-03 - Last year I purchased this DVD only to find out that there was no audio for the movie. (The trailer worked fine.) Since it was such a cheap item I threw it in the trash.
This year I tried again, figuring that the problem was fixed - wrong! This one was also bad.
I have seen the movie on VHS (one of our old favorites), so I guess I will just have to look elsewhere for a DVD version that actually works.
Family Christmas Classic
2009-12-03 - Our family watches this movie several times over the Christmas season and have loved it for years. The Christmas part of the story is really minor - it happens over Christmas. The things we love and laugh about each time are the subtle lines that you might not notice or catch if you only watch it once.
When Dudley is at Elizabeth's apartment giving her the bad news she asks him if he wants a drink and even as he is saying "no" he's pouring himself one. The snide comment about and in front of John that Uncle Felix makes early in film where they are in the restaurant and no one notices. The fact that the baby keeps changing genders (because there are different babies being watched by Nora) leading Elizabeth to such classic lines as "The baby's name is Robert --- oh...I mean Roberta" and "The baby - I must go to it".
And the classic from Uncle Felix when he tries to head off the marriage ceremony by saying the baby swallowed his watch - "You'd look different too if you swallowed a watch". Or shouting to call the police - not because the baby swallowed the watch but because it was a GOLD watch.
And watching the time actually change on the big grandfather clock in the hall of the house...you don't notice THAT till you've watched it a few times.
With (or even without) a few sips of Christmas cheer and family around we all laugh ourselves silly every time.
No, it's not a particularly "Christmas" movie, but it is one of those snappy dialogue 1940's films that you need to pay attention to get the most out of!
And do not by any means watch the remake with Kris Kristofferson...vile vile remake...
