Christmas in July

Jimmy MacDonald enters a slogan contest run by a coffee company. As a joke, his colleagues send him a fake telegram saying he has won. Jimmy believes it. He gets a promotion from his boss, buys a ring for his fiancée, furniture for her family and presents for the whole street. All of it happens without anyone seeing the money. The subject is not the prank but how credit works. Nobody checks Jimmy's pocket; they open doors because they believe he has won. His promotion and his new standing rest on the same belief, and when the truth comes out all of it is withdrawn at the same speed. The form is fast and short: the film runs under seventy minutes with almost no slack. Preston Sturges overlaps the dialogue and cuts scenes before sentences finish. It is Sturges' second film as a director. The screenplay goes back to a play he had written years earlier and drew from his own early material. The best thing in it is that the slogan Jimmy thinks he won with is a sentence nobody actually understands, while everyone spends the film pretending they do. Dick Powell plays Jimmy, Ellen Drew his fiancée and Raymond Walburn the company owner. Who it is for: viewers who like classic American comedy and fast dialogue. Who it is not for: anyone expecting depth; the film is short, has one idea and does not hide it.