A lot can happen in just one day!
Just ask Jimmy MacDonald (Dick Powell), the protagonist of the 1940 Preston Sturges film, Christmas in July, who’s a grunt office worker from a working class neighbourhood of New York City who heads off to his menial day job in an office of identical desks that looks like the dystopian corporate scene from Joe vs. the Volcano only to find out he’s won $25,000 dollars for coming up with a slogan for a coffee band owned by the comically blustering Dr Maxford (Raymond Walburn).
It’s an impressive sum, equating to some $600,000 in today’s money, and it means that he and his girlfriend, Betty Casey (Ellen Drew) can finally afford to get married, buy a car and a house, and even buy gifts for everyone in their close knit neighbourhood.
It’s the American Dream finally made real for Dick, Betty and his mother Ellen (Georgia Caine), who simply wants a couch that converts into a bed, and it means that all the struggle and worry that defines their day-to-day life is consigned to history.
Not only that but so impressed is Jimmy’s boss, who runs a coffee company which operates in rivalry to Maxford, that his employee has won the contest that has captured the imagination of a nation, all of whom are dreaming of how winning it could change their lives forever, that he promotes Jimmy to the marketing department, gives him a private office with his name painted on the glass door and a big fat raise.
Jimmy finally has it made and the day has barely begun!
But there’s a catch, there’s a always a catch – the win isn’t legit and the telegram announcing it that Jimmy gets at work has been forged by three of his workmates who thought it might be fun to see how Jimmy might react to life-changing news.
Yep, a pretty nasty practical joke, and one that soon spirals into farce and chaos, and not a little pathos, as Jimmy and Betty spend up big, but rather wonderfully, not selfishly, with much of the money devoted to gifts for the poor and struggling neighbours Jimmy has known since he was, in the eyes of the local policeman, “knee high to a cockroach”.
‘Can you see the faces on everyone when we get there?’ says Jimmy.
Betty smiles happily.
‘Yes,” she says. ‘Just like Christmas in July.’
Christmas in July is billed as a gloriously funny and over the top farce, but what really sets the taut and short 1 hour and eight minute film apart is that it’s actually got a fairly serious heart beating its more amusing moments, of which there are many courtesy of the exasperated buffoonery of Mr. Maxford and shop owner Mr. Shindel (Alexender Carr) who’s only too happy to take Jimmy’s money when he thinks the cheque is real.
For all of the fun of Maxford lambasting his employees or Shindel fairly tripping over himself to get a sizeable cut of Jimmy’s supposed good fortune, what really marks Christmas in July, which ends with ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- MacDonald actually winning the contest for real (athough the movie ends with MacDonald yet to discover his change of fortune is the real thing) is its commentary on the aspirational of modern American life.
While the American Dream mythically promises that great success is yours if you’re ready to put in the work, the truth of the matter is that for most people, that kind of storied success is illusory, something that Jimmy’s direct boss, E. L. Waterbury (Harry Hayden) sagely but resignedly notes when he speaks wit Jimmy before his fake good fortune changes the entire course of his day.
For most people, the kind of success that drives the mythology of immigrant America will never materialise, and the kind of life-changing day that Jimmy and Betty experience will simply stay the stuff of pipe dreams and fantasies.
It’s a sober lesson at the heart of a film that does have some slapstick fun, most notably when Shindel, who turns out to be a decent guy after all, and Maxford arrive in Jimmy’s neighbourhood to repossess all the goodies and baubles he’s bought – egged on by the way by people with nothing but dollar signs flashing in their eyes – and all of Jimmy’s family, friends and neighbours use fish and rotten tomatoes to make it clear they simply won’t allow that to happen.
Running right through the story is the fact that money and success can be illusory, even when you do have it, as Jimmy discovers when his win turns out to be one big, heartbreaking prank.
The third act of Christmas in July is actually a little downbeat as Jimmy and Betty have to deal with the fact that they innocently got excited over nothing but the ending actually is a happy one though Sturges rather cleverly lets his main character walk out of frame thinking his day has ended on a sour note.
At the end of the day, Christmas in July makes the point, and miraculously without feeling twee at all, that while money and success might make a real difference to your life, that what really matters are those you love and the small but sweet accommodation you make with life.
It may not always be what you dreamed of but if you have people you love around you and things that make you happy beyond material possessions, you’ll do just fine.
A film that uses its brief running time to perfection, Christmas in July is a lot of comedic fun, with scenes that are buoyantly over the top and full of heart, but it’s also serious and thoughtful, happy to balance all the blustering hilarity with some incisive insights about wealth, success and how money might make you happy but that there are things that will make you happier still if you just pay attention.
Of course, it would be interesting what happens to Jimmy the next morning when he is announced as the real winner but that’s something that will remain in the land of what-ifs and could’ve beens.