Ringing in the New Year with Classic Films

Don't have a glamorous party to go to tonight? Watch one of these classic films! No one has a better party than them!

 

The Gold Rush (1925) - silent Charlie Chaplin film (on HuluPlus)

Like most holidays, New Year's Eve is meant to be spent with friends and family -- and in the movies, any character who spends the evening alone is more than likely feeling pretty melancholy. Charlie Chaplin's 1925 classic The Gold Rush provides a particularly poignant example with its classic New Year's Eve sequence, in which Chaplin is duped into believing the object of his affection will be stopping by his poverty-stricken cabin to celebrate, only to be stood up -- and eventually fall asleep at his table, dreaming he's the life of the party after all. Calling it "the outstanding gem of all Chaplin's pictures," Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times wrote, "Here is a comedy with streaks of poetry, pathos, tenderness, linked with brusqueness and boisterousness." source

One Way Passage (1932) - William Powell & Kay Francis (sad but good)

After the Thin Man (1936) - William Powell & Myrna Loy, James Stewart

Holiday (1938) - Cary Grant & Katharine Hepburn

Bachelor Mother (1939) - David Niven & Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn

Article on the TCM blog

Holiday Inn (1942) - Bing Crosby & Fred Astaire

Sunset Boulevard (1950) - Gloria Swanson & William Holden

Room For One More (1952) - Cary Grant & Betsy Drake ( his real life wife at the time)

An Affair to Remember (1957) - Cary Grant & Deborah Kerr (watch with a glass of pink champagne)

The Apartment (1960) - Jack Lemmon, Shirley McLaine, Fred MacMurray

List of New Year's films (not complete) - can you think of any others?

 

Clips from classic movies featuring the song Auld Lang Syne. In order, the clips are from Ocean's 11, One Way Passage, The Gold Rush, Waterloo Bridge, An Affair to Remember, Wee Willy Winkie, Scandal, The Apartment, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Bachelor Mother and It's a Wonderful Life.

Happy New Year!