In an isolated village in the Savoy Alps, the holiday season arrives with ambivalence, as childlike joy and innocence lives alongside the melancholy of adults whose memories haunt the snow-covered landscape like ghosts. This year, a mysterious, long-absent baron returns home, a very ill child struggles to hold onto the Christmas spirit, and a precious jewel goes missing from the church’s nativity scene during midnight mass. And that’s all before a man dressed up as Santa Claus is discovered dead in the snow.
Part Yuletide fable, part murder mystery, Christian-Jaque’s Who Killed Santa Claus? (1941) was the first release by Continental Films, the sole film production company allowed to operate in German-occupied France. While not openly political and containing no overt references to its wider socio-political context, the tale it tells of a closely-knit town’s social order breaking down amidst suspicion and finger-pointing feels purposeful. Armand Thirard’s bewitching cinematography enhances the film’s fairytale quality, capturing the emotionally charged haze that descends on Christmas. A scene midway through the film zeroes in on Catherine, a young woman waiting for her Prince Charming to meet her at the local tavern. The rest of the partygoers are dancing around her in a circle when she realizes her love is not actually coming, and the camera circles her while being encircled by the dancers in turn. It’s a delirious and beautiful segment of happiness and heartbreak coexisting.
The fate of lead actor Harry Baur, who plays the town globemaker and volunteer Santa Claus, Father Cornusse, haunts the film. In 1943, Baur was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo for trying to protect his Jewish wife from arrest. He was discovered dead just a few days after his release from prison. His performance in Who Killed Santa Claus? was one of his last. Father Cornusse spends a good portion of the story dressed as the village Santa, going door to door visiting the local children on Christmas Eve and getting progressively more inebriated as the day goes on. He carries the witsfulness of a man who is struggling to maintain levity and mirth, but who continues on for the sake of not trampling on the hope of the younger generation. Eventually, he delivers a globe to Christian, the sick boy who is unable to walk, and while it is a classic happy ending, it also feels like a not-so-subtle message to the movie’s audience to not give up hope.
Who Killed Santa Claus? runs December 19-25 at Film Forum.
