Looking for a great Christmas film? You just found one. It begins in the late summer of 1936 in New York City and winds up on Christmas Eve at midnight. Something went wrong with the upload, so use this link instead.....https://youtu.be/SruIpM523RM?si=W3tJLcFnKumowZFK
Eight-year-old Flavia (Margaret O'Brien) lives in a New York tenement during the Great Depression with her mother Helen (Phyllis Thaxter), and father Joe (Warner Anderson), who's nearly broke and needs a job. Her aunt Susan (Angela Lansbury) lives with them, too. Flavia's thrilled because her aunt's sweetheart, Steve (George Murphy), is returning from a one-year absence. The little girl is unaware that Steve has been in jail for racketeering. She has been told he was a sailor on a long voyage
Flavia lives in a world built around fantasies and white lies told to her by her mother and Aunt. For instance, when she sees a mouse and is afraid, her mother tells her a story that if you catch a mouse and make a wish, it will turn into money.
In the midst of the Depression everybody's desperate for money. Flavia's mother Helen is pregnant and faces physical complications. Steve is unable to get his old job back, driving a taxi. His gangster friends offer him a quick job stealing a truck, but Steve's conscience gets the better of him at the last minute and he backs out.
This leads Flavia to catch a mouse, which she hides in a cigar box in an alley near Mac (the blind newspaper man's) stand. She wants the money to buy Steve a taxi cab of his own. Christmas Eve is now fast approaching.
Two neighborhood youths rob "Blind" Mac (Rhys Williams) and, by coincidence, hide the money in the girl's box after finding it and throwing out the mouse. Flavia then returns and finds that the mouse really has turned into money! She is overjoyed; until the adults accuse her of stealing it from Blind Mac. Her mother has to tell her the truth about the story and Flavia realizes that so many things she has been told are "lies". This leads her to a crisis of faith.
Her mother is having a rough time in the last stages of her pregnancy and, in an effort to give Flavia back her faith that all will be well, tells her another "story" about how on Christmas Eve all cows kneel at midnight in homage to Jesus' birth, just as in the scene of the Manger. Flavia is desperate to believe this, but assumes it to be just another "lie".
Still, in desperation for her Mom, she tries to find a kneeling cow in New York City on Christmas Eve. It is now approaching midnight; and the last few minutes of the film. She heads to the railroad by the meat market to find one out the "truth" before it's too late. Her whole world now depends on finding out if cows really do kneel, or if this is just another "lie."
This is a delightful, and well written drama about a young girl's search to have her faith restored. Along the way she discovers that life is really made up of a balance between truth and faith. And when the church bells ring at midnight; all is revealed.
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