The last line of "Miracle on 34th Street"

Factual Questions
1

I have seen the original version of this movie every year for nearly 4 decades, and I still don’t get what Fred is saying at the end. To recap (and I’m going from memory here):

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[SUZIE has gone running off into the yard to play on the swing. FRED walks up behind DORIS, who senses his presence]

FRED: You told her that? [meaning you have to have faith and believe in people]

[DORIS sighs, nods, and turns to face FRED. They embrace and kiss.]

FRED: [referring to the house] The sign out front says it’s for sale. We can’t let her down. [meaning let’s get married]

DORIS: I never really doubted you. It was just my silly common sense.

FRED: [jocularly] Hey, it even makes sense to believe in me now! I must be a pretty good lawyer. I mean, I take a little old man and legally prove to the world that he’s Santa Claus. [they laugh] Now, you know there’s no such thing as…

[FRED breaks off in mid-sentence, and stares in the distance with a shocked expression. DORIS follows his gaze to the corner, where they see Kris’ cane.]

DORIS: Oh, no! It couldn’t be! [turning to FRED] It must have been left by the people who moved out!

FRED: [still staring] Maybe… and maybe I didn’t do such a wonderful thing after all…

[close up on cane; fade out]

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OK, so what was he saying? I thought the whole point of the film was to celebrate doing good things for people. Whether Santa is real or not shouldn’t diminish Fred’s selfless actions.

I think it would have made more sense if the final line had been “Maybe I’m not such a wonderful lawyer after all.” (Meaning he realizes that Kris really is Santa Claus, and “proving” the truth in court isn’t such a big deal)

Or “Maybe I didn’t do such a wonderful thing after all.” (Meaning he was aided, unknowingly, by a higher power, namely Santa/Kris)

So, am I missing something really obvious here? I usually have trouble following movies anyway.

2

My take on it is what your first option is – that he really can’t use this case as an example of what a wonderful lawyer he is, because he didn’t prove that some little old man was Santa, he proved that Santa was Santa.

Just my two cents.

-Melin

3

He means “wonderful” in the sense of “amazing”; that is, he proved that Santa was Santa, instead of proving that some old guy was Santa. Kind of like proving that Bill Clinton is President.

4

I am with the other two posters. I think he is just saying that he was not as great a lawyer as he thought since he only proved that Santa was Santa.

I think it is just a difference in the language of the time it was made and today.

Jeffery

5

The last line is confusing. The intention was that Fred was thinking that it wasn’t as amazing that he proved Kris was Santa, since he really was Santa. However, the line, if studied, can be easily read to mean that Fred is thinking he did something bad in getting Kris off. Audiences always understand it to mean the former until they actually analyze the line.

It’s an example of how you can say something that literally means one thing and have everyone think it means the opposite. The other great example is in the song:

I’ve got spurs that jingle jangle jingle
As I go riding merrily along
And those spurs sing “oh ain’t you glad you’re single.”
And that song ain’t so very far from wrong.

Everyone who hears the song thinks the final line means “that song is right,” when literally it means the opposite.

Ain’t English wonderful? :slight_smile:

“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx

Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman

6

Remember the context of the entire film. Fred and Doris have a falling out because Fred quits his position in the law firm to become independent, all over Kris’s case. He says (paraphrasing) that he wants to help little people that are being pushed around, like Kris. That’s the only fun there is in being a lawyer anyway.

That, I think, sums up Fred’s raison d’etre. He thinks helping the little people out legally is a wonderful thing. And he thinks winning Kris’s case is a wonderful thing (and let’s face it, he was very clever to recognize the post office angle). But, as has been noted, and as the ending of the film implies, he didn’t do anything more wonderful than getting someone the recognition due him.

The Dave-Guy
“since my daughter’s only half-Jewish, can she go in up to her knees?” J.H. Marx