Lost Horizon
What makes a great family film? Most would say that it’s a film that the whole family can enjoy together, that will offend neither young nor old and possibly warm the heart. But the greatest family films not only satisfy these criteria but say something about the idea of family, of the importance of family – even if the characters on screen aren’t actually related. Take the makeshift family that forms in Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon: the passengers of an aeroplane hijacked after takeoff in China during the civil war of the 1930s are thrown together against their will only to be deposited in Shangri-La – a land where time itself seems to slow down, people’s maladies are cured and they can enjoy pursuits can’t usually in the humdrum of daily life. What results is what a family gathering should be about – forming genuine connections and taking time to consider one’s place in the family and in the community and world at large. Most fantasy films are about outward journeys to discover something new; Lost Horizon is unique in the genre for being about an inward journey toward the discovery of the self.
Lassie Come Home
Family films often gravitate toward cuddly animals – and the separation anxiety that comes when they aren’t around. Lassie Come Home practically invented this type of film, as young Roddy McDowell has his collie Lassie taken from him. Neither time nor space can separate this canine from her master, and she embarks on a journey across Britain to return, encountering many colourful characters along the way. There’s no Black Beauty-style narration to sentimentalise Lassie’s journey. But the result is pure emotion.
The Human Comedy
Maybe the finest film about the US ‘home front’ during World War Two, The Human Comedy is a largely episodic portrait of a family dealing with life after the oldest son is drafted into military service. Mickey Rooney plays a younger son missing his older brother but trying to get on with his life in high school, winning the big track meet and working an after-school job at a telegraph office. The film’s view expands beyond just this one family, though, until you feel like you know the entire community – much like Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life a few years later. One sequence features a couple driving through a park and approvingly making note of all the different ethnic festivals taking place that day. It’s a resounding celebration of the American immigrant experience – and an acknowledgment that the strength of the US comes from it being a makeshift family of a nation.
Miracle on 34th Street
The Christmas classic about a man who claims to be Santa Claus was released in 1947, but it essentially sets the stage for the 1950s. It’s about the birth of the post-war consumer culture, and how affection for family and friends can be best expressed by the act of spending money. Edmund Gwenn’s Kris Kringle doesn’t protest about the commercialisation of Christmas – he embraces it, and becomes the department store Macy’s very own Santa Claus, except that he refers his own customers to other shops if Macy’s doesn’t have what they’re looking for. Operating from this firm belief in the benevolence of capitalism, he facilitates the romance of single mother Doris – Maureen O’Hara in a very progressive depiction of a working woman – with a lawyer bachelor friend of his and even enables their ultimate move to the suburbs so that their transformation into the model nuclear family of the 1950s is complete.
Ordet
Families can be repressive as well, and Danish film-maker Carl Theodor Dreyer’s spiritual epic about a family nearly torn because of disputes over religious doctrine – one son appears to have lost his mind and wanders around saying he is Jesus Christ – clearly demonstrates this. Its glacial pace and austere attitude may seem off-putting, but Ordet heads toward a resolution so luminous and life-affirming that families anywhere can appreciate what it says about the mysterious bonds that tie us – and the world – together.
Pather Panchali
It’s tempting to call Bengali master Satyajit Ray’s 1955 film the Indian Grapes of Wrath for its portrait of a family descending into poverty, displacement and tragedy. But that would suggest it’s just an exercise in miserabilism. Seen largely from the perspective of young son Apu – portrayed by Subir Banerjee who gives one of the most expressive performances from a child ever – every scene conveys the joy of discovering the world as a child. When Apu first glimpses a train or when his sister Durga dances in the rain it’s an acknowledgement that simple moments can fire a family’s fondest memories.
Mary Poppins
Sometimes a family needs an outsider to shake it up: who better than a flying nanny with a parrot umbrella, candy-coloured medicines and chalk-drawing friends? And the Banks family is definitely in a rut. The patriarch, George, is a fastidious fuddy-duddy who seems to care more about his banking job than his wife and children. He needs to learn that sometimes all you need is a laugh for a laugh’s sake, tuppence to feed the birds and the time to go fly a kite. In the end, Mary Poppins is there to save him as much as anyone, and his reformation is every bit as powerful as Ebenezer Scrooge’s.
Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
The first Star Wars film essentially begins where director George Lucas’s previous film, American Graffiti, left off. That was a movie all about the ambivalence a young man felt about leaving his hometown to go to university – with the movie building to his ultimate choice to depart. Star Wars is about what happens after you make the choice to leave home for good. Of course, for Luke Skywalker, the choice to “take your first step into a larger world” is made for him when his family is killed. But his process of going out into the universe and discovering himself also involves assembling a new hodgepodge family, including a princess, a smuggler, a Wookiee and two droids. It’s a journey practically everyone takes, whether you leave home to attend university, start a career, or carry secret documents to Alderaan. After all, no Jedi is an island.
Radio Days
Family is essential for so many things: for having heated arguments about whether the Atlantic or Pacific is the greater ocean; for support when your date thinks Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast heralds an actual Martian invasion; for lip-sync battles to the latest Carmen Miranda radio hit. At least that’s the vision of Woody Allen in his intoxicating riff on his childhood years, Radio Days. Many people throw out the words ‘quirky’ or ‘dysfunctional’ when talking about their family – to Allen, such adjectives are redundant. Family is those things inherently. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.
The Black Stallion
Carroll Ballard’s ravishingly beautiful 1979 drama about how a boy and a horse help each other survive on a desert island after a shipwreck, then return to civilisation to take the horse-racing world by storm, is even less sentimental a movie about bonding with animals than Lassie Come Home. Part of that is due to the young star Kelly Reno, whose acting is so understated he should have been a muse for Robert Bresson. It’s surely one of the greatest performances by a child captured on film. Also turning in a low-key marvel of a performance Is Mickey Rooney, who steps in as a surrogate father for the boy as his trainer to get him ready for the big race.
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