Southampton Playhouse Lights Up Season with Holiday Film Series

Call it a festive mixture of naughty and nice. The Southampton Playhouse is kicking off a series of Christmas film classics from November 29 to December 24. “Everything from mysterious stories set in snowy landscapes to romance, comedy, and life-affirming encounters at the most wonderful time of the year,” says Eric Kohn, the Playhouse Artistic Director.

It begins innocently enough with screenings of Elf on November 29 and again on December 2 in what Kohn describes as a “brilliant mixture of slapstick and Christmas cheer.”

Then things go a little off the snowy trail with Orson Welles’ The Third Man presented on December 5. Uh, the kids may want to sit this one out. Kohn dubs it “wintery noir from the great British director Carroll Reed.” The inky, black and white classic is also part of The Scorsese Family Experience, featuring films selected by Martin Scorsese and his daughter Francesca.

Before You’ve Got Mail there was The Little Shop Around the Corner starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan. Kohn calls this one “A pitch-perfect holiday season romance masquerading as a passive-aggressive workplace comedy.” Set in Budapest, this one rolls out on December 9.

And now for something completely different, Kohn throws in The Shining on December 13 and 14. Wait, what? “For horror movie buffs, this wintertime tale of isolation and dread is the ultimate dark holiday season treat,” Kohn assures me. OK. And on the IMAX screen I’m in. But again, kids may not be too comfortable with the alcoholic Jack Nicholson running around a hotel with an axe. You decide.

Back to our regular programming, how can you miss the chance to see A Christmas Story on something a little bigger than your home TV? Repeatedly. Here’s your chance on December 17. Bring the kids to this one but leave the BB gun at home.

Finally, it’s a wonderful excuse, sorry, for It’s a Wonderful Life. Again, the chance to see this on a big screen seems almost irresistible and it’s perfectly timed with showings from December 22 to 24. Can there be a better Christmas Eve for the family? Jimmy Stewart is back and he’s not exactly in the tinsel and hot toddy spirit. But things change. Angels get wings, yada yada yada. You know the story.

And Kohn says the 1946 classic still rings true. “Over the years, It’s a Wonderful Life has embodied the resilience of small-town American life and the idealism that so often obscures appreciation for what we already have.”

So it’s happy holidays on Hill Street. And to all, some very good nights. Uh, and matinees.

Bill McCuddy leaves an occasional treat under our door. We print them. He lives in Bridgehampton with his wife and probably has an egg nog in his hand as you’re reading this.