When we see a snow-globe fall from Kaneâs dying fingers to shatter on the stairs, it sets up cinemaâs greatest metaphor for the life unlived. Childhood days of sledding are a dreamy, white-shrouded vision, but one sealed off behind glass, an idyll the tycoon can no longer access.The sheer quantity of snow in Capraâs holiday classic required a pioneering special effect. The traditional white-painted cornflakes made too much noise, so 6000 gallons of the fire-fighting chemical foamite, mixed with soap and pumped through a wind machine, were used instead. Picture: MPTV imagesCredit: MPTV images The Torrance family were warned that winters in the Overlook Hotel would be fierce: the snowdrift comes right up to second floor windows, enabling Danny to be pushed out and run into the maze to hide. Itâs here that his dad gets lost for good, following tiny footsteps into a frozen void. Picture: Moviestore Collection / Rex FeaturesCredit: Moviestore Collection / Rex Features Lucky for Phil Connors that thereâs always snow on Groundhog Day, or how else would he perfect the art of ice sculpture? Ramisâs immortal time-loop comedy is partly about being stuck in one climate and learning to make the most of it â constant slush is no oneâs idea of fun. Picture: CHANNEL 5 BROADCASTINGCredit: CHANNEL 5 BROADCASTING Irving Berlinâs song has become more famous than the film it belongs in. He came up with the melody on the set of Top Hat (1935) and used it first in the Crosby-Astaire vehicle Holiday Inn (1942).From its famous opening, with a helicopter inexplicably chasing a dog across Antarctic wastes, John Carpenterâs shape-shifter shocker is the coldest, bleakest, least cuddly of monster movies. If you made a snowman out of this stuff, chances are it would mutate and try to eat your head. Picture: Rex FeaturesCredit: Rex Features Anyone whoâs never been to North Dakota, and knows it only from the Coen Brothersâ indelible fable of criminal bungling, would be led to expect an entire population saying âYah, you betchaâ and a flat white horizon as far as the eye can see. Pack a parka: thereâs no escape. Picture: AP Photo/Gramercy PicturesCredit: AP Photo/Gramercy Pictures Not too hospitable, the planet of Hoth â when youâre not being gored by the Abominable Snowman-like Wampas or besieged by AT-AT walkers, youâre falling to your knees in an appalling blizzard, and being forced to spend the whole night curled inside the guts of a ripped-open tauntaun.This animated Disney drama, which riffs on Hans Christian Andersenâs The Snow Queen, centres on newly-crowned royal Elsa who cloaks her kingdom in ice when she unleashes her secret magic power. The 40-strong effects team behind the snow scenes developed a new computer program, called Matterhorn, to create the filmâs snow â but they went back to paper and pen to get the look just right for Elsaâs magic. Picture: DisneyCredit: Disney James Bond does like a ski chase. There are more in The Spy Who Loved Me and The World is Not Enough, and that one on a cello in The Living Daylights, but all pale next to the scale and momentum of his escape from Blofeldâs Alpine hideout in On Her Majestyâs Secret Service. Those Arctic shenanigans in Inception owe it a lot. Picture: Rex FeaturesCredit: Rex Features John Hughes, who wrote this merrily slapsticky Yuletide home-invasion romp, has been called the Frank Capra of his age, and had a similar thing for the white stuff (see also: Planes, Trains and Automobiles). Here it lends blanket assurance that nothing too awful will befall Macaulay Culkin.You donât get much more anti-heroic, not to mention slow, than the climactic gunfight in Altmanâs downtrodden frontier western. Itâs all furtive trudging, hiding behind rocks, and bullets in the back. The elements lent a hand â heavy snow fell for nine days while they shot it. Picture: Rex FeaturesCredit: Rex Features Ascending the near-vertical west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes wasnât the problem for Joe Simpson and Simon Yates: it was coming back down. Crawling over a glacier with a shattered knee, Boney M playing in your head and only melted snow keeping you alive, is the very definition of delirium.Itâs not all trolley songs, jollity and tinsel. Minnelliâs evergreen musical plumbs the depths of despair when the distraught Tootie (Margaret OâBrien) savagely lops the heads off her snow people. âNobodyâs going to have them! Iâd rather kill them if we canât take them with us!âA school bus, a frozen lake, a slippery bend: snow-fond novelist Russell Banks (Affliction) wrote the source for Egoyanâs haunted drama about a terrible accident in British Columbia. Ian Holmâs hearse-chasing lawyer proposes a suit, but the townâs emotional deep-freeze takes some thawing. Picture: Rex FeaturesCredit: Rex Features Burtonâs gentlest film â yes, the one where Johnny Depp has blades for fingers â reaches its peaks of pathos when toytown suburbia turns wintry, and Edward bends his talents to fashioning the exquisite sculpture of an angel from a block of ice, while his sweetheart (Winona Ryder) gawps on in astonishment. Picture: 20th Century FoxCredit: 20th Century Fox Has there even been a better excuse to put Julie Christie in sable hats? Costumier Phyllis Dalton inspired a fashion revolution here, but Lean and cinematographer Freddie Young donât stint on the chill, doing for a trek through the glacial Urals what they did for the desert in Lawrence of Arabia. Picture: Warner BrothersCredit: Warner Brothers Itâs impossible to forget the scene in this one-of-a-kind Inuit epic where the hero runs for his life, completely naked and seemingly for days, across the frozen wastes of the Canadian Arctic. This film also wins the prize for snowiest interiors, given that most of the dramatic intrigue centers in and around igloos. Picture: MH Cousineau/Iglooik Isuma ProductionsCredit: MH Cousineau/Iglooik Isuma Productions Chaplinâs Tramp turns Klondike prospector in this classic silent comedy, full of helter-skelter snow chases and marauding bears. Inside his shonky cabin, which ends up tipping off a cliff, he performs several of his most famous routines, including the dance of the dinner rolls and the serving of boots for supper. Picture: Rex FeaturesCredit: Rex Features Itâs been winter for some hundred years in Narnia, thanks to the curse Tilda Swintonâs White Witch called upon the land. This does allow her to rock the glam-villain stylings of a frosty warrior-sorceress, and to have a chariot drawn by polar bears, so you can understand why she was tempted. Picture: Phil BrayCredit: Phil Bray
Rachel Young 
