The Best Thanksgiving Film
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
First Things
Publication Date
11-23-2023
Abstract
(Excerpt)
Thanksgiving doesn’t inspire many movies. Yet it has a central role in one of the best movies ever made, about Thanksgiving or any other holiday: Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose (1984). I make a point of watching it every November—and so should you.
True, the film trades in broad, ethnic stereotypes: It features a fast-talking, nebbishy Jewish talent agent and a crass Italian mob widow with big sunglasses. Not everyone will appreciate its Runyonesque sentimentality about New York in the early ’80s. But Broadway Danny Rose manages to be both funny and sweet. Americans nowadays don’t think of Thanksgiving as a religious holiday, but Allen foregrounds religious themes, including the need to show gratitude to God by reaching out to others. For a film by a self-consciously Jewish atheist who famously rejects religion, its meditations on God, humility, guilt, and forgiveness make Broadway Danny Rose one of the most Christian films I know.
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Available at: https://firstthings.com/the-best-thanksgiving-film/