I’m sure there isn’t one among us who would disagree with the immortal Robbie Burns, who wrote so long ago and yet so timelessly “We twa hae run about the braes, And pu’d the gowans fine; But we’ve wander’d mony a weary foot, Sin auld lang syne.”  Mind you, so unless you were born in a peat bog you won’t know what the hell he’s nattering on about… but take my word for it that it’s an acknowledgment of the long journey that is our life (knock wood) and the opportunity provided us by each year that see through to the end to reflect upon those days gone by, on what we’ve gained and what we’ve lost and what the exchange means to us.

New Year’s Eve is often used in movies to punctuate the loneliness of unfortunate characters.  Think out-of-work Hollywood screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) in Billy Wilder’s SUNSET BLVD. (1950), who is kept in camphor as the boytoy of faded silent star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) and who becomes her reluctant plus-one at a New Year’s Eve bash for two.  A decade later, Wilder had depressed good time girl Shirley MacLaine run away from bad (and, it bears mentioning, married) boyfriend Fred MacMurray on New Year’s Eve into the arms of nice guy Jack Lemmon in THE APARTMENT (1960), bracketing a decade between despair and redemption.  In John Hoffman’s STRANGE CONFESSION (1945), an “Inner Sanctum” cutdown of Universal’s earlier THE MAN WHO RECLAIMED HIS HEAD (1934), New Year’s revels are used in bitter counterpoint to the dire situation of a brilliant but under-funded pharmaceutical clinician (Lon Chaney, Jr.) who is used and abused by his unscrupulous boss (J. Carrol Naish) as  he beavers away at a cure for influenza.  In THE GODFATHER: PART II (1974), budding mafiosi Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) informs his adlepated turncoat brother Fredo (John Cazale) that his days are numbered and seals the message with the colpo di grazia as, all around them, lovers and loved ones embrace the arrival of the new year.

It can be beneficial when occurrences bigger than ourselves step in at the last moment to take our minds off of our broken hearts and this is especially true on New  Year’s Eve.  In THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972), a luxury liner chockablock with a SHIP OF FOOLS manifest of colorful characters capsizes on New Year’s Eve during the countdown-to-midnight – what a way to start the year!  In AFTER THE THIN MAN (1936), urbane tipplers Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) have to put their partying on pause to solve a murder that occurs – you guessed it – at the stroke of midnight.  In Kathryn Bigelow’s dystopian STRANGE DAYS (1995), the eve of the New Millennium is the setting for a sprawling sci-fi tale of technology run amuk in an age of civil unrest and apocalyptic murmurings. In the barrel-scraping slasher film NEW YEAR’S EVIL (1980), a mad killer (Kip Niven, son of David) goes on a homicidal tear on New Year’s Eve, threatening to kill a different “naughty girl” as the clock strikes twelve in each of the four major time zones, with The Final Girl being “punk rocker” Diane Sullivan (Roz Kelly).  This unalloyed guilty pleasure has been squarely lost in the shadow of its betters (BLACK CHRISTMAS, HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY THE 13TH, APRIL FOOL’S DAY) but got a grudging endorsement from Roger Ebert.

New Years Eve scenes are plentiful in cinema, going back at least as far back as THE GOLD RUSH (1925) and popping up even today in such contemporary fare as ABOUT A BOY (2001) and SEX AND THE CITY (2008).  Everyone no doubt has their favorites (from IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE to WHEN HARRY MET SALLY) and here are mine:

The New Year’s Eve setpieces from HOLIDAY INN (1942) aren’t its warmest (the big third act Christmas scene introduced the chart topper “White Christmas” to the world) or even memorable (nothing beats Lincoln’s Birthday for sheer jaw-dropping wrongness) but they’re still fun and to this day I can’t toss a big salad with giant wooden spoons without crooning “Kissing the old year out… kissing the new year in” whether it’s December 31st or July 4th.  Woody Allen’s RADIO DAYS (1987) ends on a piquant note of New Year’s Eve melancholy as the modest festivities inside a Brooklyn home are contrasted with the revels of a clutch of swells on the rooftop of a Manhattan hotel and Allen’s wistful narrator laments that the voices of his childhood grow dimmer and dimmer with the passing of each year.  AFTER THE THIN MAN director W. S. Van Dyke included the song “Auld Lang Syne” at the end of the 1940 film I TAKE THIS WOMAN, with Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr being serenaded by an a capella chorus of tenement ethnics (including Willie Best as “Sambo”).  If you’ve got 8 minutes to spare, see this clip through to the tear-jerking end…

Yet my favorite “days long gone” moment comes from a movie that isn’t even about New Year’s Eve but about the end of the world.  In Geoff Murphy’s THE QUIET EARTH (1985), a man (Bruno Lawrence) believing himself to be the only survivor of a cataclysmic event finds himself in the company of the last woman on Earth (Alison Routledge) and the other last man on earth (Pete Smith).

Amidst the expected brier patch of horror, wonder, desperation and jealousy comes a perfect moment of bittersweet harmony, as Smith’s Maori roughneck sets himself down at a grand piano to bang out a sweetly sad rendition of “Auld Lang Syne.”  For my taste, Alison Routledge overplays the irony of the moment but Pete Smith’s funny little smile gets the complicated mix of emotions just right.  Writing about the film in February of this year, blogger Marilyn Ferdinand put it best:  “This film has an ache, one I’ll be feeling for a long time to come.”  I know that ache and it stuck with me for twenty years between viewings of THE QUIET EARTH, as one year followed another in the time-honored accumulation of days long gone.

Happy New Year!