Forget the maudlin Christmas sentiment of A Charlie Brown Christmas. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is the greatest animated adaptation of Charles Schulz's iconic Peanuts comic strip. Great Pumpkin tackles faith versus reason, hope versus cynicism and never once talks down to the audience.
In 1966, eager to take advantge of the unexpected success of the 1965 Christmas special, director Bill Melendez quickly produced another Peanuts cartoon using Halloween as his seasonal focus.
Though most adults who grew up watching the various Charlie Brown cartoons can recall large amounts of the Christmas Peanuts cartoon, details from the Halloween outing don't always fare so well.
Most remember Charlie's refrain "I got a rock." And Linus' desire to see The Great Pumpkin usually lodges in our collective memory.
A Charlie Brown Christmas is not without its charms -- the underdog victory, unapologetic religious message rendered without holiday overkill and a perfect soundtrack from West Coast jazz man Vince Guaraldi.But Great Pumpkin, benefiting from not having to hang its story on the obligations of Christmas, trumps its predecessor in every way.
Schulz and Melendez focus the story on Charlie Brown's sidekick Linus Van Pelt. So instead of following the constant drubbings from a world that kicks Charlie to curb so often that something as minor as an invitation to a Halloween party inspires America's favorite blockhead to dance like a lunatic, the audience watches as Linus' beliefs are tested.
In Christmas, Charlie's failures are supposed to arouse our sympathies while Linus quotes scripture and declares that a withering weed of a Christmas tree needs only "a little love" to transform it into a robust symbol of the holiday. Sentimental hogwash.
Pumpkin plays Charlie's Job-like miseries for laughs. He is accidentally invited to the party, he can't master the basics of a simple ghost costume, and the girls use his cranium as a scratch pad for Jack-o-lantern designs. The ostensible star of Peanuts becomes the comic relief.
Meanwhile, Linus dares to dream that the Halloween equivalent of Santa Claus -- the titular, grand gourd -- will deliver gifts at a nearby pumpkin patch simply because the patch is "sincere." Children and adults want to share in Linus' well-intentioned idea, but even Linus doubts his convictions. An early scene in which he's writing a letter to the Great Pumpkin has the boy writing: "If you are a fake, don't tell me. I don't want to know."That moment offers a small taste of the crushing disappointment due to arrive by the third act. Children watching might share in the nagging feeling that perhaps not all the marvelous stories our parents tell us about the world are true, and grown-ups might recall specific moments in which life pulled the curtain back to reveal a sad truth, whether we were ready to see it or not. (The moment when Linus frets after accidentally says "if" in reference to the Great Pumpkin is key.)
As for Vince Guaraldi's part, the composer/pianist retains enough of the spritely piano, bass and drums sound that makes his theme "Linus and Lucy" a cross-generational favorite. But he lets the low moan of a flute do much of the heavy lifting in Great Pumpkin.
Like a dead leaf sawing the cool air, the flute plays during Snoopy's mood-altering reenactments of a downed pilot crossing the French countryside during WWI. It also accompanies the one tender act in the film, unexpectedly executed by Lucy, the gruff older sister of Linus.
And the final scene -- a conversation between Charlie and Linus -- reads like nothing less than the deflated regret of two adults recalling the previous night's failures. They might as well be nursing hangovers as Charlie sighs with uncertain optimism for next year, even though he knows as well as we do that life will pull the football away before he can kick it.
Happy Halloween.
