There is one day in the year when it is acceptable for anyone, of any age, to lie on the sofa all day and for much of the night. The blinds remain legitimately lowered; the telly can stay switched on. One hand will grasp the remote control; the other might leaf through a jumbo box of After Eights. It will probably be raining; you may be feeling more than a little sick; the trousers you were given yesterday feel a size too small today, and Granny has just announced she will be staying another night. It’s Boxing Day.
Traditional feelings — disappointment, torpor, lassitude — can be kept at bay as long as one remains glued to the sofa, deaf to all interruptions and with one’s gaze fixed firmly on the flickering screen. And television isn’t good enough — it has to be feature films. TV programmes can absorb — they may even divert — but they rarely transport and, compared with, say, 30 minutes of EastEnders, a good film can buy 120 minutes of rapport between bickering relatives. Yes, rapport: not a word one associates automatically with families at Christmas, and certainly not a mood induced by other Boxing Day activities. Long walks end in tears and blisters; family meals are notorious black spots; and board games bring out the worst in everyone, more likely than not to end with dice, board and pieces crackling on the fire.
Putting together a daytime viewing programme takes a little more consideration than one for after dark. There may be children about — there tend to be at this time of year — and it’s in everyone’s interests to bear them in mind, in case they burst into the room while someone’s being shot to death and are in consequence put off Martin Scorsese’s entire oeuvre. So, after breakfast, mollify the little blighters with a ‘children’s’ film, but make sure it has bite, otherwise it will be utterly unmemorable: Watership Down (Martin Rosen, 1978) is a dark and harrowing vision masquerading as a children’s film about bunny rabbits; The Witches (Nicolas Roeg, 1990) is properly frightening and grotesque; and The Black Stallion (Carroll Ballard, 1979) is an overlooked rarity: a serious, unpatronising film for children that is written, directed and acted with total restraint.
After elevenses, something lively. The usual roster will make their appearances in the TV listings — James Bond, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter and that whingeing little Frodo — but there are equally deserving, if less obvious, candidates: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969) and North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959, Cert. PG) for the adult-minded; Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (John Hughes, 1986) and Time Bandits (Terry Gilliam, 1981) for the helplessly childish. Nobody in these films is allowed to hang about for more than five minutes, which gives the viewer, by extension, the feeling of having taken a terrific amount of exercise and being in urgent need of lunch.
So: cold ham and baked potatoes, and, after that, war. Quite why The Charge of the Light Brigade (Tony Richardson, 1968) is not on every list of ‘Greatest War Movies of All Time’ is a mystery to me. Made during a golden period of British film-making, featuring outstanding performances from John Gielgud, Trevor Howard and the sainted David Hemmings, it is comic, caustic and ultimately tragic. Both Richardson’s film and The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998) characterise perfectly the unholy muddle of war without resorting to grandstanding or pomposity, or to the patronising sneer of hindsight.
The mood at teatime will be sombre, so the next screening should be something more cheering: a romantic comedy. And before you make that face, I will say this: yes, recently the genre has been hijacked by a succession of identikit potboilers in which stupid, lumbering men are outmanoeuvred by cunning, humourless women. But once upon a time films were made — funny, clever, romantic films — in which both male and female characters were fully credible individuals. If you, like me, hated You’ve Got Mail then you just might love its inspiration, The Shop Around the Corner (dir. Ernst Lubitsch, 1940), which boasts Jimmy Stewart, Margaret Sullavan and none of the schmaltz. Want to see a film in which the female lead actually has to work for a living? Try Working Girl (Mike Nichols, 1988) or His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940), both of which are more concerned with the office than the altar. Sick of the blandness and blondness of every hero and heroine? Rejoice in Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971), a romance in which the couple are separated by 60-odd years.
Time for two more films before bed. First, a thriller to sharpen the wits, and then something to scare us witless. Thrillers: The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974), The Year of Living Dangerously (Peter Weir, 1982) and The Passenger (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975) are all unexpected and quite brilliant. They also show their ‘stars’ (Warren Beatty, Mel Gibson and Jack Nicholson) in surprising and intelligent roles. Carlito’s Way (Brian De Palma, 1993), similarly, reminds me of what Al Pacino was like before he started shouting and directing traffic in every film. Although The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973) is too oblique and meandering to qualify as a thriller, I cannot put you to bed without recommending it.
I’m not the ideal person to recommend a horror film because I’m so easily scared — it took me, in my youth, several attempts to get through even the opening credits of The Shining (it’s all about the score), and I get more feeble as the years pass. But what I want from a horror film is not slashing, chopping, hacking or sawing; I want suspense, and The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980), Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973), The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961) and Les Diaboliques (Henri-George Clouzot, 1955) deliver that in spades. Any of these will make climbing the stairs to bed seem far too frightening a prospect, so it might be simpler to stay put on the sofa, polish off that smidgen of wine left in the bottle, and let those square eyes rest where they lie.
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