The central premise is spun out with a gentle amusement, although it is not until the court battle that the film finds its feet and starts to play the idea out with some dramatic relish. Director George Seaton moves through the plot with an efficient pace for the most part. There is the occasional moment where he manages to get away with sneaking in a few droll comic sketches – like Shelheimer’s feeding his wife triple martinis resulting in a routine with her picking up the phone the wrong way round, or a scene where Natalie Wood introduces Edmund Gwenn to the joys of bubblegum blowing, where he promptly pops it all over his beard. Edmund Gwenn makes a jolly if stuffy Santa Claus. Nine year-old Natalie Wood shines with an intelligent sparkle that heralds much for her coming stardom.

The film’s only disappointment is its fade-out at the end on the vague suggestion that Edmund Gwenn might be Santa Claus – after the time it spends arguing for his right to be such, this is surely an anti-climax. If one reads the ambiguity the other way it lends to the more interestingly subversive reading, that the film is instead about the American public’s own constitutionally-guaranteed right to be eccentric. Indeed, Miracle on 34th Street is not unlike another great classic from the era Harvey (1950), which argued in favour of the joys of thorough eccentricity and the fact that people with eccentric and outrightly lunatic beliefs had a better centeredness of sanity than those who took life seriously.

The film was badly remade as a 60 minute tv special Miracle on 34th Street (1959) starring Ed Wynn as Kris Kringle; the tv movie Miracle on 34th Street (1973) with Sebastian Cabot as Kris Kringle; and the cinematically released Miracle on 34th Street (1994) starring Richard Attenborough as Kris Kringle, however this subverted the film into a heavy dollop of Family Values and Christian feelgood sentiment.