A Christmas Story
Short description
Set in Indiana in the early 1940s, A Christmas Story follows nine-year-old Ralphie Parker as he campaigns for the one gift he truly wants: a Red Ryder air rifle. His mother warns that he will shoot his eye out, his teacher is unimpressed when he writes about the gun in a school assignment, and even a department-store Santa turns him down. Undeterred, Ralphie keeps scheming to change his parents' minds while navigating the ordinary troubles of the season, from his younger brother Randy to the bullies who wait on the walk to school.
Bob Clark directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Jean Shepherd and Leigh Brown, drawing on Shepherd's stories. The film came fourth among the nine features Clark directed, arriving between Porky's and Porky's II: The Next Day. Peter Billingsley plays Ralphie, with Melinda Dillon and Darren McGavin as his parents, Jean Shepherd narrating as the grown Ralphie, and Ian Petrella and Scott Schwartz among the credited cast of forty-one.
Made for about three million dollars and released in November 1983, the film took in roughly twenty-one million worldwide, a solid return on its budget. On IMDb it holds 7.9 from about 181,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.2 from far fewer votes. A critics' rating of 8.5 from sixty-two reviews places it ahead of both audience scores, indicating strong professional approval alongside enduring popular affection.
What's left behind the scenes
- In the scene where Flick's tongue supposedly freezes to metal, a hidden suction tube was used.
- This film is now considered a Christmas classic, however, according to the lead actor Peter Billingsley, not many major studios at the time (early 1980s) were interested in a project about a boy dreaming of a Red Ryder BB gun during a time when the Great Depression had only recently ended. Billingsley revealed in an interview that in exchange for permission to film a Christmas movie, director Bob Clark had to promise the studio he would later make a horror film.
- The film is set in a small town in Indiana, but filming took place in Cleveland, Ohio. Before settling on Cleveland, Bob Clark sent his representatives to 20 American cities in search of one that most resembled a town in 1940s Indiana.
- The residents of Cleveland turned out to be surprisingly welcoming and provided a lot of help with the filming. For example, old cars were brought to the set from all over the city – whatever people had available. These cars were then used in the filming, helping to recreate the atmosphere of the first half of the 20th century. In particular, cars from a local vintage car club were used in the film. Their owners were given a route around Public Square in the business district of the city to follow during filming and were asked to periodically drive this route until further notice.
- When filming took place in a Chinese restaurant, Melinda Dillon was deliberately given the wrong pages of the script, and everyone was aware of this except the actress herself. For example, Dillon had no idea that the duck she had ordered would be brought in with its head still attached. The actress's reaction was completely genuine and involuntary, which is what Bob Clark was aiming for.
- Teddy Moore was nine months pregnant during filming. Since showing an unmarried pregnant woman in the 1940s was unthinkable, the filmmakers had to resort to various tricks, such as padding, to make Moore's character look simply full-figured, but not pregnant.
- Some scenes of the film, including the episode with Santa in the store, were filmed in Toronto, in the Canadian province of Ontario.
- The Parkers' car is a 1937 four-door Oldsmobile sedan with Indiana license plates.
- Scenes near the school were filmed at a school in the Canadian city of St. Catharines.
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