Why this is the greatest Christmas film ever...

The greatest Christmas film ever? Surely there can’t be any doubt. It’s The Bishop’s Wife, a film that you can watch again and again and again and always discover something new, a film where the delight and the discovery are always completely, beguilingly fresh. In fact, after 25 years of watching it every Christmas, I’m convinced that it actually gets better every time.

The charm? Well, it’s so many things. It’s the fact that it is black and white; the fact that it is set in New York; but above all it is the sheer skill and beauty of the performances of its three very, very different leads, Cary Grant as the angel, David Niven as the bishop and Loretta Young so memorable as the bishop’s wife of the title. The angelic intervention and the era it evokes suggest all sorts of comparisons with It’s A Wonderful Life which so often (and so wrongly) gets lauded as the world’s favourite festive film, but really The Bishop’s Wife leaves it standing in pretty much every department. It’s been suggested that The Bishop’s Wife gets overlooked because of its focus on a man of the cloth, but really it’s far far more than that thanks to Grant and Young who enjoy such wonderful chemistry on screen. Which is, of course, part of our trio’s problem. There really oughtn’t to be any chemistry at all. You see, Cary is an angel sent down to earth to put the bishop back on course. It’s certainly not part of his remit to fall in love with the bishop’s wife. But therein lies so much of the attraction of this film.

It is being shown again in cinemas this Christmas to mark its 75th anniversary, and as always, it simply glows – with the power of an enticing story gloriously told but also with the love Grant’s angel starts to feel.

Part of the fascination for me has always been that originally Cary Grant played the bishop and David Niven the angel. When original director William A Seiter left the film, replacement director Henry Koster took a look at what had been filmed so far – and promptly decided that the two were in the wrong roles. How lovely it would be to see that original other-way-round footage – not least because it is sure to underline the sheer cleverness of the casting. Niven is superb as Bishop Henry Brougham, the harried, anxious bishop who is desperate to build a new cathedral, having lost sight of the fact that actually being with his family and being out there with his congregation is the true monument he should be working on.

Fabulous too from Grant as the charming, all-powerful angel Dudley who can decorate Christmas trees with the wave of his hand, sort the office with similar and also fill the puzzled professor’s glass without touching it. Lovely too from Young as Julia, absolutely the innocent in it all, wanting only her husband’s love. And there are some fabulous set pieces: the way Cary’s angel heads off the gossips in the posh restaurant and maybe above all that fabulous final flourish when he’s skating in Central Park. It’s an awful piece of continuity. You know you’ve just watched a stunt double only for Grant to spin back into the picture, but somehow the clunkiness adds to the magic of it all. And that snowball throw a little earlier. Just brilliant. Then comes the resolution – so cleverly done as Henry the bishop finally rediscovers what matters. But what of Dudley the angel? Again it’s beautifully done in a truly peerless Christmas classic.