To see a grown man cry, all you need to do is show me the scene here where Edmund Gwenn, as Kris Kringle, cheers up the sad little Dutch orphan girl. I will be unreachable for at least three minutes. Be kind and pass me a tissue. I’m not proud of being a walking can of Chef Boyardee—hard on the outside; soft, gooey and cheap on the inside—but that’s what I’m stuck with. I was born this way. If you ask me, sentimentality is like whipped cream. Sometimes it’s too much, sometimes it’s just right. Like anything else, there’s an art to it—and I think that this most frothy Christmas classic gets it right. It helps that the film largely plays its premise as a comedy. Gwenn’s nice bearded old man here goes on trial in New York City (shot on-location and nicely so) to prove whether or not he’s really Santa Claus. We don’t think to doubt him. Those in the film who do doubt him pointedly lack imagination (Maureen O’Hara, as the jaded retail executive and single mother—mildly scandalous at the time—and daughter Natalie Wood who’s raised without even benign illusions). Meanwhile, those who believe him are salt-of-the-earth types, giving and likable. On later viewings though, you start to wonder. Maybe Gwenn is just delusional, yet also extremely kind and devoted to the task. To the film’s credit, it remains charming however you interpret it.