Director
Bob Clark
Leading Actors/Actresses
Melinda Dillon, Peter Billingsley
Supporting Actors/Actresses
Darren McGavin
Genre
Christmas Movie, Family Movie, Comedy
Language
English
Awards
Canadian Genie Award, 1984; selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 2012 for its cultural significance
Date of Release
November 18, 1983
Producer
Bob Clark, Rene DuPont
Setting and Context
Hohman, Indiana in December 1940
Narrator and Point of View
The narrator is Ralphie Parker as an adult, telling a story about his nine-year-old self.
Tone and Mood
Festive, fun, chaotic
Protagonist and Antagonist
Ralphie Parker is the protagonist, while all of the adults in the movie who seem to want to prevent him from having a BB gun are the antagonists.
Major Conflict
The central conflict of the film is that Ralphie desperately wants to be taken seriously by his parents, his teachers, and his friends by receiving a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, but he keeps getting discouraged and told "you'll shoot your eye out" from the adults in his life.
Climax
Ralphie unwraps a mystery gift after all of the other gifts have been opened and finds that his father has bought him the Red Ryder BB gun he has been dreaming about.
Foreshadowing
Ralphie's mother's initial underwhelmed reaction to the leg lamp foreshadows her decision to secretly break it.
Understatement
When Mrs. Parker tells her husband she was just watering her plants when the leg lamp broke, the audience knows that she used watering her plants as an excuse to get close enough to the lamp to break it.
Innovations in Filming or Lighting or Camera Techniques
N/A
Allusions
The film, which debuted in 1983, makes a number of allusions to Midwestern American life in the 1940s: listening to the radio at night, being punished with bars of soap in your mouth, walking to school in the snow, and the appearance of traditional gender roles are just a few examples of the film's nostalgic yet critical portrayal of the time period.
Paradox
Ralphie is furious that all of the grown-ups refuse to buy him the rifle because he will shoot his eye out, but the very first time he uses it he knocks off his glasses and seriously considers whether or not they were actually right.
Parallelism
By the end of the film, a parallel has been drawn between Ralphie and his father, who previously appeared to have little in common. Ralphie's father admits that he bought the BB gun for Ralphie because he himself had one when he was Ralphie's age, suggesting that Ralphie has begun transition out of childhood and into adolescence.
