IDEALISM IN THE MOVIES

I watched Miracle on 34th Street (1947), a bit here, a bit there, piecing it all together as it replays during the Christmas Season. I find it mysterious, in that it never makes clear (although we are constantly pulled to believe) that Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) is really Santa Claus. HE believes he is, and there is a tug-of-war as we see him being perfectly sane and reasonable about everything else, but we don’t see him flying on sleighs and delivering toys to every child on earth in six minutes. Instead, he is a model citizen, full of integrity. Hired by Macy’s to play Santa just after the Parade, he refers buyers to stores where the same or better products can be found more reasonably. And, for this, Macy’s sales boom. Doing well by doing good. His kindness and understanding toward the six-year-old played by Natalie Wood is symbolic of his kindness in general. I wonder whether such idealism in a movie had to do with a buoyancy in the population surrounding triumph in war and the building up of former enemies. But why was the theme repeated in 1959’s The Mating Game, where Paul Douglas plays an unbelievably solid and kind-hearted neighbor and citizen, who refuses to accept from the feds the 14 million dollars his property has accrued through an ancient deed? He has everything he needs to be happy, he declares. In this time of fractious politics and runaway greed, we could learn from the idealistic tenor of such classic movies.