Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19780 in VHS
• Released on: 2001-10-09
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Black & White, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 67 minutes

Amazon.com
Released the same year as his directorial debut, Preston Sturges's second feature, Christmas in July, streamlines and supercharges the writer-director's visual and narrative styles. Sturges again tackles a ripe satirical target (in this case, advertising), and dramatizes it with a hyperbolic plot and over-the-top characters, all clocking in at a blink-and-you'll-miss-it 67 minutes.

Jimmy MacDonald (Dick Powell), an underling at the mammoth, bureaucratic Maxfield House Coffee company, dreams of his big break through an entry in his employer's radio sweepstakes for a new slogan. Jimmy's would-be tagline ("If you can't sleep at night, it isn't the coffee--it's the bunk!") may be inscrutable to all but its author, but when coworkers engineer a phony victory, even the company president swallows the bait. For a moment, at least, Jimmy and his sweetheart (Ellen Drew) are $25,000 richer. How they spend, then lose, that fortune occupies the rest of the slender story line, setting up Sturges's fable as a comment on greed and community.

Even with Sturges's hectic pacing to push characters and wisecracks at a furious clip, the feature feels more like a fast-food snack than a full meal, and specifics of the plot feel very dated. The director's fans will probably find the biggest Christmas present is the evident expansion of Sturges's still embryonic repertory company, which adds some key players in Franklin Pangborn, Ernest Truex, and Raymond Walburn. --Sam Sutherland

Customer Reviews

A comic gem from Sturges.
One of Preston Sturges' best but least known films stars Dick Powell as an ordinary guy who becomes the victim of a prank and thinks he has won a slogan-writing contest. Altho the events are fairly predictable, this does not detract from the laughs. As with all Sturges films, plenty of fine old character actors (including, as always, William Demarest) are on hand. Why doesn't anyone make 67 minute movies anymore?

Comedy and Humanity
I've always loved this film. Other reviewers have described it in detail, so I won't repeat. The comic foil characters have more humanity than similar characters in better known, and more highly regarded, Sturges films. And it's a terrific spoof of the PR industry.

At the Soho Repertory Theatre, my coartistic director Marlene Swartz and I came across Sturges's original playscript for the story, entitled A Cup of Coffee, when we were producing a series called "The Lost American Play" in the late 1980s.

Surprised that the play had never been produced on the stage, we obtained permission from Preston's son Tom and his widow Sandy for Soho Rep to premiere it at the Greenwich House Theatre in 1988, where it played to capacity houses and came close to being optioned for Broadway.

Our production provoked media interest in Preston Sturges's career and resulted in a book deal for Sandy Sturges, who published Preston's writings as his posthumous autobiography. Sandy and Eddie Bracken subsequently presided over a book signing at a Sturges festival at the Film Forum in New York.

As a result of this rewarding experience, I continue to be attached to Christmas in July for reasons beyond the film's merits, but I still trust my original reactions to it, and for me it shares with The Lady Eve the status of favorite among so many Preston Sturges masterpieces.

The joke's on everyone - just watch how much you laugh
One of Preston Sturges's earliest movies for which he both wrote and directed, and it's a beauty. William Powell is the victim of a practical joke pulled by his fellow employees and believes he's won $25,000 in a jingle contest. He spends the money on presents for all the people and kids in his poor tenement neighborhood and then learns of the hoax. His self-confidence suffers more than anything. The comedy is like quicksilver, and the jokes and wisecracks fly fast and furious. The funniest scene might be the one on the street where the store he bought everything from tries to get its stuff back - it's hilarious.

Sturges usually had a hidden (and sometimes not so hidden) message burried within the humor, and here it's all about what it means to be a success and whether money can bring happiness. Usually he's pretty subtle about these messages, but unfortunately here he beats us over the head with it by ending the picture with a two-minute speech about "giving the unknown little guy a chance": no one wants a lecture after laughing your head off for an hour. Still, I hope somebody's put a statue up someplace in Hollywood for the great Preston Sturges: no one deserves one more than he.

HEY YOU STUDIO KNUCKLEHEADS, WHERE'S THE DVD?!