A familiar premise indeed: A young woman comes back to her hometown during the holiday season, looking forward to spending quality time with her family. However, her plans take an unexpected turn when she crosses paths with a charming man and they find themselves falling in love amidst the festive Christmas atmosphere. Traditionally in movies, this man is often a local with a humble and endearing occupation. What if, instead, he were an outsider working as an insurance investigator, and the holiday activities entailed uncovering the truth behind a recent death in the girl’s hometown, rumored to be a suicide but possibly a murder? While the plot of “Cover-Up,” a Christmas thriller from 1949, may not align with the typical holiday romance formula, its unique blend of noir elements and festive cheer makes it an intriguing choice for post-holiday viewing.

Why watch Cover-Up tonight?

There are a fair number of noir, crime, and thriller pictures set on or around Christmas and the new year – but not all of them make great use of that setting. Some use it as gimmicky window dressing, which can be superficially enjoyable but marginal as a winter-season watching choice; others mine it for rich thematic resonance without actually having much in the way of holiday aesthetics. Cover-Up is notable for the way the movie really integrates its sweet Christmas romance into the small-town mystery at its center. Sam Donovan (Dennis O’Keefe, who also co-wrote under a pseudonym), the insurance investigator, seems weirdly unbothered to be sent (via bus, no less!) to a strange town on Christmas Eve to look into the death of a local man ruled as a suicide; he’s basically a hard-boiled detective character who bumps straight into the heroine of a holiday rom-com when he helps Anita Weatherby (Barbara Britton) with her impossible pile of loose Christmas packages.

Sam isn’t a holiday cynic; he’s happy to accept a dinner invitation from Anita’s family, once he sorts through this insurance case. But as he looks further into the matter, and finds the suicide evidence even flimsier than initially suspected, a key weapon seems to be tied to Anita’s father, and the victim in question was apparently widely hated around town. Basically, Sam spends the movie alternating between questioning various figures in the case and cavorting around doing holiday activities with Anita, who has clearly formed a quick crush on the new guy in town.

A more lady-centric and/or comic version of this story might assume Anita’s point of view as she gets caught up in this web of intrigue, exposing elements of her hometown she wasn’t fully aware of, reflecting how a familiar place can look different after time away. Cover-Up is more traditionally positioned than that, and admittedly it’s not one of the great whodunits of the 1940s. (It probably isn’t even the best whodunit of 1949.) On the other hand, it’s a hookier story than the usual claptrap about holiday romance, and it integrates its two disparate genres remarkably well, making it work equally well for cozy holidays or chilly January nights.

Not only does director Alfred E. Green evoke warm homecomings with its decorations and pivotal tree-lighting ceremony, the story it winds up telling about the town and cover-up in question has the kind of communal concerns that you might expect from a milder, cornier Christmas picture, while still involving murders and conspiracies. Calling this a cheerful movie would be a stretch, but if it doesn’t quite feel like a noir, it’s because it maintains a Christmas movie’s faith in the idea of the greater good. Also: The movie runs a slim 83 minutes, which means you can get back to hibernating nice and early.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.