The person or persons who wrote the 'product description' for this film on Amazon and the "storyline" for IMDB... obviously did not watch the film. There was NO conflict between the "Zoe" and the director. Here is a good comment from a Weaverville, North Carolina IMDB reviewer, who DID watch the film:
A Christmas Without Snow offers a great cast, intelligent writing, and characters we care about. As other reviews have stated, Michael Learned plays a divorcée starting over in San Francisco who, in an attempt to find some stability, joins a church choir which is about to attempt an ambitious mounting of Handel's Messiah. John Houseman is the no-nonsense director who demands perfection from his choir. As the choir progresses toward its performance of the musical masterpiece, we gain insight into the lives and personalities of various members. What other reviewers have missed is the sense of community among the diverse parishioners/choir members, something that reflects positively on the traditional Christian church. In almost vignette-type fashion, we get to know these people, their loves, hopes, hurts, and see them rally together to tackle the Messiah and also the various problems they encounter as a church and as individuals. There are no quick fixes, no tidy happy endings. Yet these people have each other and the satisfaction of working hard at their endeavors. There's support, there's love, and there's a lot that is healthy and thriving and growing. Intelligent and life-affirming without being syrupy. Recommended.
A review by Simon Davis of Australia is featured in between the next snaps:
"A Christmas Without Snow' could never be put into the same category as most of the other, older Christmas favourites that are played each festive season. It tells its story in a very warm manner but never once does it cave in to playing too sweet and sentimental. It gets a regular screening each Christmas in Australia and has become a regular Christmas favourite for me.
The real strength of "A Christmas Without Snow' is the wonderful performances given by a group of seasoned acting professionals. Michael Learned shines in the role of Zoe Jensen, the pivotal character here who is a recently divorced mother of a young son who has come alone to San Francisco to start a new life and finds life a difficult adjustment without her family and familiar surroundings. She also finds it difficult finding appropiate teaching work in the city and as a release from her frustrations she joins the choir of the local community church.
There she encounters an even greater challenge when she finds herself having to deal with the domineering choir master Ephraim Adams (the gifted John Houseman in a splendid performance), who is a perfectionist and drives the choir to the edge in an ambitious staging of Handel's Messiah. The film uniquely shows the choir's progression from a group of amateurs who all love music through to the end performance while revealing alot about each of the main characters and some of the issues they are confronting in their lives along the way. This is done in an interesting non sentimental way for each of the main characters. We see Zoe struggling with being on her own for the first time and having to deal with a possessive mother over the telephone who thinks she is doing the wrong thing moving to San Francisco without her son.
We see Ephraim after all his work leading the choir having to make some harsh decisions about some members suitability and then being struck by a stroke just prior to the main performance. We see Reverend Lohman (James Cromwell) having to deal with a communication problem with his son that almost results in the group not performing, and Wendell (Calvin Levels) the black boy who loves to sing struggling to help his grandmother and then being wrongly accused of damaging the church.
The screen play reveals the characters as all very human with faults and there are no automatic happy endings for any of the characters in the story, only hard work to try and make their lives better than they were. It is refreshing to see a Christmas movie take this approach without sacrificing the warm sense of needing to belong to a community which this movie so richly depicts.
The performances are all a joy to watch and Michael Learned and John Houseman in particular are very memorable in their playing. Michael learned, an extremely capable actress had just finished her long running Emmy Award winning role as Olivia Walton on the classic series "The Waltons" at this time and here she takes on a role very different from that which made her famous in the series. She is at times warm, insecure, assertive and caring for the other choir members in their troubles and really is the heart and centre of this touching yet realistic Christmas tale. John Houseman, playing a character very similiar to his wonderful performance as Prof. Kingsfield in "The Paper Chase" is also a standout and is at times a hard task master with the choir but also never fails to reveal the great love and admiration he has for the members of the choir under his direction.
I believe if you like well written and realistic characters then "A Christmas Without Snow" will be a film that will get your attention. It is a fine movie to include in your Christmas viewing however it carries a message that all of us should embrace throughout the year, that being that none of us is without failings and that all of us need to be cared for and loved as human beings no matter what time of the year it is. I recommend "A Christmas Without Snow' as a part of your future Christmas viewing if it isn't already.
Only DVD-R copies are available as of 11-16-10 at Amazon. And at Netflix it is available for streaming only. The video quality is not the best, but perfectably viewable.
