Happy Holidays, folks.
According to my planner, it was Dec. 23, 2020 when I finally saw “Bell, Book and Candle” in its entirety. Since the start of this year, I unintentionally (but also intentionally) saw this film eight times via TCM, and to top it off, I acquired the DVD version this month. It’s a film you could watch from spooky season to New Year’s Day because it’s about a witch trying to switch things up on Christmas.
James Stewart leads in another holiday film, this time partnered with Kim Novak and Jack Lemmon, and all of them work wonderfully whenever they’re paired in films together. The soundtrack also lives rent free in my head, especially the number that plays when Stewart’s character looks for the night club.
This particular scene features Stewart and Novak’s characters eloping on the top of the Flatiron Building in the early daylight hours of Dec. 25. Stewart’s hat is shortly taken by the wind, landing near Madison Square Park. If it snowed in the coming months there, I’d be more happy than I should. If I had access to the rooftop, I’d probably stick a cutout of the two stars on that spot so I could say it really happen — excluding the hat part, this scene was all shot in a studio.
The photo on the second slide of the embedded Instagram post comes from my seventh viewing this year on Dec. 23, so I like to think that I’ve come full circle. The unintentional eighth time I watched the film was shortly after as I was looking for a scene to illustrate.
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Dearest Reverie 