The daylight hours are disappearing and nights are closing in (at least in the northern hemisphere). I love the hygge of this time of year: candles, warm drinks, snuggling under a blanket watching films. But which films to watch?
What’s a perfect cosy movie for long dark winter evenings?
My pick is 1995’s Sense and Sensibility [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV]. With a script by Emma Thompson, and directed by Ang Lee, this is a compassionate, generous adaptation of Jane Austen’s romantic drama about the kindly Dashwood sisters (Thompson and Kate Winslet) and the suitors tenderly pursuing them (Hugh Grant, Greg Wise, and Alan Rickman). It’s such a lovely, gentle film, bittersweet and emotionally enrapturing.
Your turn…
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It’s not a gentle film, but I’ve always liked watching The Empire Strikes Back on a winter day that’s specifically a big snow day.
So snowy!
For my wife its all those old classic christmas movies.
For me? Dont know, as I rarely watch a movie more than once. Life is short, and there is no time for it. Too much new stuff to watch.
That’s a valid philosophy, but I’ve always found it interesting that folks who say this usually apply it selectively to narrative art (movies and books) but not to other art/food/experiences they may enjoy. I wouldn’t go swimming only once, or make a delicious recipe only once, or listen to my favorite song only once (in which case I wouldn’t have any favorite songs). Wonder why movies and books are different. Not judging, just an observation.
I know what you mean, and yet I am drawn back to some movies (and books) over and over again!
Here in southeastern Ontario sometime during the month of December, we can usually count on having at least one late afternoon where it’s overcast, dark gray and dismal, with calm winds and light flurries falling on the snowy hills and local evergreen woods; in other words, the same weather conditions we see in the opening scenes of “Where Eagles Dare”, the 1968 WWII action-adventure film starring Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood.
I enjoy taking in this highly improbable film at least once a year, particularly when I can look out my living room window and view almost the exact same snowy weather and countryside as I’m seeing onscreen. And the whole film has a cold, damp, frosty feel to it, what with Nazis and castles in the Bavarian Alps, that it makes you feel good to be warm and cozy inside watching it.
Another winter-oriented film I enjoy this time of year is Sergei Bondarchuk’s version of “War and Peace” from the mid-1960s, my favourite scenes being the whole sequence leading up to and including Natasha’s attendance at the Imperial ball where she dances with Prince Andrei for the first time.
Other feel good films for any time of the year would include Tony Richardson’s “Tom Jones” from 1963, Richard Lester’s “The Three Musketeers” and “The Four Musketeers” from 1973 and ’74 respectively, and finally, Leslie Howard in “The Scarlet Pimpernel” from 1934, and Ronald Colman in “The Prisoner of Zenda” from 1937.