YMMV / Miracle on 34th Street

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Kris really Santa Claus? Or just a kindly old man with a relatively harmless delusion?
  • Does the judge rule in favor of Kris because he believes, or for the sake of his future reelection campaign? Or some combination of the two?
• Award Snub: Natalie Wood gives one of the best remembered performances by a child actress of her generation and was named "Most Talented Juvenile Star of 1947" by Parents Magazine, however when the Academy Awards rolled around the following year, they chose to bestow their (now defunct) Juvenile Academy Award to Claude Jarman Jr. for The Yearling, a film that is comparatively less remembered today. Had the Juvenile Oscar not existed at the time, it's possible Natalie might at least have scored a Supporting Actress nomination.
• Catharsis Factor: Kris whacking Sawyer on the head followed by Macy firing him are definitely what he deserved for being a bullying Jerkass.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Judge Harper, the beleaguered judge at the trial who has to deal with the Realpolitik factors (as well as his own family's feelings about the case) while showing a bit of a softer side by the end.
• Fair for Its Day: Doris's Freudian Excuse for her stubborn pragmatism and Fantasy Forbidding Mother status can be viewed as slightly sexist today: her ex-husband, whom she thought was her Prince Charming, turned out to be a jerk, so as a result she raises her daughter to be like a little adult with no imagination. But the fact that Doris is both a successful career woman and a divorced single mother is never once frowned on, and despite her questionable parenting choices, she's portrayed from the start as a loving, attentive mother who effectively balances her career with raising her child. (See Values Resonance below.)
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • A major plot point is that Kringle is seen as mentally unstable but not being a danger to himself or others, leading to the climactic court hearing to be allowed to maintain his freedom. In 2022, after a number of public attacks caused by mentally unstable people, the NYC court decided to allow law enforcement to arrest and send people declared mentally unfit to the hospital if they refuse treatment, regardless of whether or not they are harmless.
  • District Attorney Thomas Mara remarks to his wife that the negative press coverage he's getting makes him look like "a sadistic monster" who likes to "tear the wings off butterflies." Years later, Natalie Wood's own biographer would reveal that this was a tactic Natalie's mother, Maria Gurdin, ACTUALLY used on the set of her first movie - 1943's "Happy Land" - in order to get her to cry on cue, taking her aside and pulling a butterfly out of a jar before proceeding to pull its wings off. It worked and Natalie began sobbing hysterically at which point her mother pushed her in front of the camera and yelled "she's ready!"
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Seeing the Macy's people so worried about Gimbels, knowing that Macy's was eventually the big winner of that rivalry.
  • In the 1947 version, Susan compares Kris to the previous year's Santa, saying, "at least this one doesn't wear glasses." Kris himself wears glasses in the 1994 version. Not only that, but the idea of Santa wearing glasses is nowadays fairly common to see in modern depictions in general.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • In the 1947 version, Thelma Ritter is only on screen for a few minutes, as the tough-talking mother who can't find her son a toy fire engine... but boy, does she make an impact. This was Ritter's film debut (she'd had a few roles on Broadway beforehand), and it catapulted her to national attention and a famous career as a character actress.
  • In a more heartwarming example, the Dutch girl (in the 1947 original) and the Deaf girl (in the 1994 remake) appear in one short scene each, but their interactions with Kris are among the best-remembered and most-loved parts of their respective films. The 1994 version is celebrated for Kris giving the deaf girl a heartwarming message in accurate sign language.
• Retroactive Recognition: The 1947 film has quite a bit of it.
  • Natalie Wood, who plays Susan, went on to play Maria in West Side Story among other adult roles.
  • William Frawley, still a few years away from playing Fred Mertz, appears as Judge Sawyer's political advisor, Charlie.
  • Jack Albertson plays the Post Office mail sorter who hits on the idea of forwarding all the kids' letters for Santa to the courthouse.
  • Thelma Ritter, as mentioned above, plays a harried Macy's shopper in her first screen role.
• Signature Scene: For the 1947 film, Kris Kringle taking the Dutch orphan girl on his lap and talking to her in Dutch out of the blue.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: A couple brief cues in the 1994 version reference Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker but are not quite those pieces.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Everyone is perfectly fine with a little girl being left in the care of the dashing stranger across the hall. To be fair, Cleo the Housekeeper mentions that she can keep an eye on Susan through the apartment windows to ensure she's safe, but the idea of a man not well known to a child's legal guardian befriending said child has different connotations today (and in the 1947 version, he admits he was befriending Susan in order to woo Doris.) The 1994 remake alters the storyline to have Dorey Walker and Brian Bedford already in a serious relationship, thus ducking this issue altogether.
  • Kris' line to Alfred about overeating ("It doesn't seem you've had time to be guilty of anything, except overeating") can come across as jarring to some modern-day viewers, especially considering that it's framed as Kris comforting him when he's already depressed. However, the concept of body shaming – or, more specifically, "fat shaming" – barely existed at this time beyond condemning the most obvious kind of abuse or bullying, nor was being heavy as stigmatized as it is today. It's also clear that Kris doesn't intend to be hurtful, and Alfred shows no ill will towards him when they meet again at the courthouse (their interaction suggests that Alfred understands that by confronting Mr. Sawyer, Kris was in his corner). It also helps that Alfred joked about his own weight when he and Kris first met, remarking that he already has the "padding" to dress as Santa himself, so Kris knows he has a sense of humor about it
• Values Resonance:
  • This film seems really ahead of its time with Doris Walker being a successful business executive whose delegated authority no one disputes and there is no mention of her ever giving up her career for Fred Gailey. Furthermore, her role as a single career mother is never questioned, only the very cold worldview she has adopted and taught to her daughter.
    • The Catholic Legion of Decency did give the film a "B" (morally objectionable in part) rating due to Doris being a divorcee.
  • The film's critique of commercialism replacing the spiritual elements of Christmas and society as a whole is one that is continually echoed in the modern era. Amusingly, this critique was left out of the 1994 remake – likely due to the remake's excessive use of Product Placement and promotions.
  • In addition, the film's view of the mentally ill is extremely on-point almost a century later. It correctly states that most people who are mentally ill are not a threat to anyone. Furthermore, even as Kris believes himself to be Santa Claus, he's still perfectly cognizant and capable of taking care of himself; he doesn't need to be constantly monitored or kept in an asylum.

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