Journalist Elizabeth Lane is one of the country's most famous food writer. In her columns, she describes herself as a hard working farm woman, taking care of her children and being an excellent cook. But this is all lies. In reality she is an umarried New Yorker who can't even boil an egg. The recipes come from her good friend Felix. The owner of the magazine she works for has decided that a heroi
Journalist Elizabeth Lane is one of the country's most famous food writer. In her columns, she describes herself as a hard working farm woman, taking care of her children and being an excellent cook. But this is all lies. In reality she is an umarried New Yorker who can't even boil an egg. The recipes come from her good friend Felix. The owner of the magazine she works for has decided that a heroic sailor will spend his christmas on *her* farm. Miss Lane knows that her career is over if the truth comes out, but what can she do?
Christmas in Connecticut is a holiday film that plays 365 days of the year. Barbara Stanwyck gives a brilliant, sardonic performance as Elizabeth Lane, a columnist for Smart Housekeeping magazine, whose enticing descriptions of the exquisite meals she prepares for her husband and baby on their bucolic Connecticut farm earns her fame as "America's Best Cook." A writer, she is; a cook, she is not. As she types the words, "From my living room window, as I write, the good cedar logs cracking on the fire..." the view is of clothes flapping on the line outside her bachelorette Manhattan apartment. An able supporting cast keeps her lie on life support: her editor, her stuffy and detestable architect suitor, and the wonderful "Uncle" Felix (S.Z. Sakall), an English-garbling Hungarian chef who provides the recipes that fill her column.
Cut to Jefferson Jones, a sailor adrift at sea for weeks after his destroyer is torpedoed. Memories of the food described in Lane's columns are central to his survival. After his rescue, as he's recuperating in a naval hospital, a marriage-minded nurse thinks she might nudge Jones to the altar if he could only experience a real domestic Christmas. And it just so happens that she was nurse to the grandchild of Alexander Yardley, the wealthy and powerful publisher of --you guessed it--Smart Housekeeping magazine. And so, she pens the letter that could unravel Lane's carefully constructed fraud. She writes to Yardley asking that Jones be included in America's ultimate Christmas--the one to be held at the Lane family farm in Connecticut. The pompous Yardley (ably portrayed by Sidney Greenstreet) believes the Lane myth and instantly sniffs a story that will send his magazine's circulation skyrocketing. And staring down a lonely holiday, he decides to join the Lanes for Christmas on the farm, too. Now, all Lane has to do is come up with a farm. And a husband. And let's not forget the baby. Christmas in Connecticut is classic screwball entertainment of the best kind, with its on-target skewering of social convention and house-of- cards-about-to-tumble tension: a perfect farcical vision of domestic blitz. --Susan Benson
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Christmas in Connecticu:
Love this movie and it was sent to me in good condition and right on time...would recommend the seller
Christmas in Connectcut review:
The "Christmas in Connecticut" movie was o.k., but we purchased the video mainly for the black and white trailer movie, "STAR IN THE NIGHT," which is more than worth the price of the video. It's a modern (well, sort of) version of a birth in a stable, and shows how peoples' attitudes are changed when they work together to help. It will bring tears to your eyes. It's only about 20 minutes, and we watched it several times during the Christmas season.
A holiday favorite!:
This movie isn't available in many places and at this price. This is one of the funnier, sweet movies I like to watch at Christmas time. Thanks for having it available, even after the holidays!
NOT a Christmas movie at all . . .:
but rather a screwball romantic comedy. Except for the snow on the ground, the story could as easily have been at Thanksgiving or Easter. I was rather disappointed by "CinC" despite a terrific cast including Barbara Stanwyck and Sidney Greenstreet (both playing to their strengths), SZ "Cuddles" Sakall (the comic waiter from "Casablanca") and Una O'Connor (the rubber-faced Irishwoman from a zillion movies in the 30's and 40's, most notably "The Invisible Man" and "Adventures of Robin Hood") providing... more info
