The best New Years Eve movies and why they’re all different

A cork pops. A ball falls. Fireworks paint the night sky. Another New Year is around the corner, and for at least a moment New Year’s Eve represents all of the New Year’s potential for hope, love, and even despair. Due to the increased emotions of the transition between one year and the next, New Year’s Eve has been used as a dramatic backdrop in films since the birth of cinema. Movies set on this most auspicious night of all explore these emotions in so many ways: In classic movies like there is hope of redemption The Phantom Carriage and One-way passage, or the prospect of a new life and love, as in the romantic comedies When Harry met Sally … or While you were sleeping. And sometimes New Year’s Eve stories are as simple as looking forward to a rocky year-end party, like in the Ensemble comedies 200 cigarettes and New Year’s Eve. Like the endless covers of “Auld Lang Syne” over the years, there is more than one poignant way to use New Year’s Eve to lead characters into new lives.

New Year’s Eve is often a symbolic place where salvation seems possible. Victor Sjöström’s silent film from 1921 The Phantom Carriage suggests that hope and despair are two sides of the same coin. The film tells of an old legend: Whoever dies first in the New Year has to ride the carriage of death. Through a series of flashbacks in flashbacks, Sjöström uses this legend to paint a story of two men who went astray and the power of kindness to bring one of them back. It’s a story of new beginnings, both in life and in death. Similar issues play out that have been investigated in the prehistory.Hays code romance One-way passage. William Powell plays Dan, an escaped murderer who falls in love with the terminally ill Joan (Kay Francis) aboard an ocean liner. Neither knows the other’s secret, but their romance makes Dan crave redress for past wrongs, while Joan has hope for the first time since her diagnosis. At the end of the film it is clear that they will never meet on New Year’s Eve in Mexico as planned, but the audience should hope that one day we will all find love equally strong.

Pictured: Warner Bros. Pictures

New Year’s Eve films often show such lost souls who find comfort and consolation in one another. In the romance of 1944 I will see you then, Joseph Cotten plays a shocked soldier named Zach, who is on vacation from a hospital. His superiors believe that the free time will help him adjust to civilian life again. On a train, Zach meets Mary (Ginger Rogers), who he does not know is a prisoner convicted of negligent homicide, to visit her family. During their week-long courtship, they hide their secrets for as long as they can. During a dance on New Year’s Eve, completely covered in streamers, the two find happiness that was neither thought possible nor thought possible. The cleansing power of a new year gives their union a greater edge.

“New Year, New You” is a compelling fantasy nourished by resolutions that often involve increased self-care and other positive changes. The 1995 romantic comedy While you were sleeping turns this idea into a sentimental romance. CTA employee Lucy (Sandra Bullock) is still mourning the death of her father a few years ago. When she saves the life of her crush, Peter (Peter Gallagher), she is catapulted into a new family who think he is her fiancé. This includes his brother Jack (Bill Pullman), with whom Lucy falls in love throughout the story. Lies are at the heart of this film, mostly out of misunderstandings or a lack of communication. At a New Year’s Eve party, Jack follows Lucy under the assumption that one of these misunderstandings makes her pregnant. This is the party where the heat burns the brightest between Lucy and Jack, and they have a chance to start something real if only one of them were brave enough to tell their truth. The moment passes, and they ring in a new year on unsteady ground that, to be honest, feels more realistic anyway.

PICTURED: Hollywood Pictures Home Video

For Blake Lively’s Adaline in 2015 The age of Adaline“New year, new you” has a deeper meaning. Adaline, a New Years baby, was born in 1908, but due to an unusual accident, she stopped aging shortly before her 30th birthday. New Year’s Eve reminds her of everyone she lost in the sands of time. She swears by romantic relationships and moves every decade to avoid suspicion, but her plans go awry when she meets the handsome, poetic philanthropist Ellis (Michiel Huisman). Director Lee Toland Krieger and writers J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz put the question at the center of the action, whether Adaline will ever open up to love and loss again. They challenge us to really think about what we are doing with our time on earth, however long or short it may be. They suggest connecting with other people is the only correct answer.

In some ways, a new year is like a repetition: a chance for a new January, a new February, a new spring and summer, and so on. But for people who deeply regret it, just one real repetition will do. In film noir Repeat performance, the film begins on New Year’s Eve with a woman standing over a corpse, a smoking pistol in her hand. At the stroke of midnight, the woman, Broadway actress Sheila Page (Joan Leslie), wishes she could do it all over the year. When that wish is granted, she goes through the year trying not to make the same mistakes twice, but many of the great events of the year happen again anyway. As the film progresses towards the dynamic death from the opening scene, Sheila begins to question whether fate is actually real, and nothing she does can change it. In the end, the film challenges audiences to view past mistakes as lessons that lead us into a better future.

New Year’s Eve is often a tense night for even the strongest of couples. In Paul Thomas Andersons Phantom thread, Fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his muse Alma (Vicky Krieps) spend much of the film mixing their radically different sensibilities. Their conflict comes to a head when Alma wants to go out to a lavish party on New Year’s Eve while Reynolds wants to work. Alma defies his wishes and goes to the party without him, dressed to the smallest detail. Reynolds can’t believe her defiance and waits at the door for her to return. When she doesn’t come back, he goes to her. Alma uses the party not only to demonstrate her own independence, but also to demonstrate his dependence on Reynolds her. Whether their power struggle is healthy is best left to another point in time, but again, PTA sets that dynamic moment in their relationship on New Year’s Eve to underline the growth it represents for them. You start the new year stronger than the last.

Image: focus functions

New Year’s Eve tends to be accompanied by self-reflection, which can include a new understanding of love. In Billy Wilders The apartmentElevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) is torn between her boss Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), with whom she is having an affair, and her colleague Bud (Jack Lemmon), who owns the apartment where the affair takes place. The affair weighs on Fran’s self-esteem, but her friendship with Bud begins to heal. She continues to see Sheldrake even though her involvement breaks his marriage. When “Auld Lang Syne” plays at a New Years Eve party, Fran realizes she is with the wrong man. She really loves Bud and is in a hurry to be with him. With texts from an 18th poem attributed to Robert Burns, “Auld Lang Syne” is a plea to remember friends who have stood by your side in the past and are in The apartment, the song reminds Fran that she and Bud have a friendship that is a much stronger foundation for love than sex alone.

Friendship becomes love – that’s the subject of another film with a brilliant New Year’s Eve scene: Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron When Harry met Sally … with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in the title roles. The two meet as they drive from Chicago to New York City after graduating from college. They understand until they don’t anymore. They split up. They meet again. They split up. By the time they meet a third time, almost a decade has passed and they become friends who bond through the recent breakups of their respective long-standing relationships. The film tries to answer the question “Can a man and a woman be friends?” and when the two sleep together for the first time and their friendship almost ends, she seems to say no.

But when Harry races against time to kiss Sally at midnight on New Year’s Eve, it’s because he had the same insight as Fran: he and Sally love each other because they are such good friends. Doubtful at first, Sally is convinced of Harry’s detailed explanations about every little thing he loves about her – the kind of thing you only know about someone when you spend a lot of time with them. When “Auld Lang Syne” begins, Harry asks what the lyrics actually mean. Sally replies: “It’s about old friends.” They share a knowing look and then kiss between a sea of ​​other couples hugging. The answer to the question is, “Yes, a man and a woman can be friends … and lovers.”

Picture: Columbia Pictures

While many films focus on one such couple, New Year’s Eve happens to all of us. Films like Risa Bramon Garcias 200 cigarettes and Garry Marshalls New Year’s Eve Take the night to find out how many people’s stories overlap in unexpected ways. Both films have an enormous cast, with one set on the eve of 1981 and the other in 2011. They represent two very different times in the history of New York City. In 200 cigarettes, everyone involved goes to a simple house party hosted by Monica (Martha Plimpton), but getting there becomes a mythical journey for each character.

In New Year’s Eve, the hub is the Times Square Ball Drop, where every character is somehow involved in some aspect of the event, including Claire (Hilary Swank), the vice president of the Times Square Alliance. These ensembles allow the filmmakers to play with multiple themes at the same time while capturing the chaos of a wild New Year’s Eve. Most of us don’t remember everyone we meet at a New Years Eve party, but these characters learn that sometimes the smallest connections at that time of year can have the biggest impact on the year ahead.

New Year’s Eve is a brief moment when anything seems possible. Even in times of desperation, whether connections have been made or lost, the characters in all of these films know that their lives will be different in the New Year. Everyone will have the chance to start over – and maybe the audience too.