If money were no object, you could solve the problem of what to get for that film buff on your list with Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films (Image Entertainment), a box set compiling no fewer than 50 full-length masterpieces from the distributor that pretty much created the art house theater. From 1922’s Haxan (Witchcraft) to 1973’s The Spirit of the Beehive, with stops along the way for the best films of Fritz Lang, G. W. Pabst, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, David Lean, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Renoir, Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut and others, it’s a film school in a box, though comparing it to a year of college tuition is about the only way to make the $850 price tag seem like a bargain.

The Janus box is an extreme example of what drives the DVD market around the holidays. If there’s hope for the prepackaged home video industry in the advent of an almost-here era when everyone will be able to download everything, it can be seen in the continued success of box sets. What other than the consumer’s desire for impressive packaging can explain the sales on DVD of shows like Seinfeld or Friends, which are still in regular rotation on at least two or three channels you get?

And of course “impressive packaging” is at least half of what makes a great gift. With rare exceptions, the best most of us can hope for when exchanging our wrapped and be-bowed offerings is that the recipient not actually look horrified when he or she opens it. Everything beyond that is gravy.

Box sets look more impressive than a single DVD, but are expensive enough that you want to give serious thought to what you buy. (Unlike most other items, DVDs—and CDs and software—are wholly unreturnable once the shrink wrap is off them.) You may want to give someone near and dear a nice box set of Cary Grant films, for instance—who wouldn’t like that? But there are three sets of five films each (no overlap) to choose from: Cary Grant: The Screen Legend Collection (Universal, $29.98); The Cary Grant Signature Collection (Warner Home Video, $49.98); and The Cary Grant Box Set (Sony, $49.95). Surprisingly, the best choice is the cheapest one, the newly released Screen Legend Collection, which presents five early Grant comedies that have never previously been released on VHS or DVD, and which to the best of my memory never even show up on TCM (as do all the films in the other two sets).

But if you really want to win the heart of a classic film buff this season, forget about the new John Ford or Frank Capra collections. The one to get is Preston Sturges—The Filmmaker Collection (Universal, $59.98), which allows you to hold in your hand one of the greatest runs of success ever achieved by an American filmmaker. All of these films were made in the space of four years, and, with the exception of the dramatic curiosity The Great Moment, every single one is a comedy classic, as manic and breathlessly paced as anything ever put on film. It’s a shame that the set doesn’t include The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, possibly Sturges’ single best film (the rights are held by a different studio), but that’s no reason to pass up a set that includes Sullivan’s Travels, The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, Hail the Conquering Hero, The Great McGinty and Christmas in July.

Generally speaking, I find it ridiculous to spend $140 on a television series, especially one that totals 17 hours. But I would make an exception for The Prisoner Complete Series Megaset (A&E Home Video), the brilliant British series that first ran in 1967. Along with starring as the British secret agent whose attempts to leave his employment result in his being held captive on an island where civilization is only what its unseen controllers want it to be, Patrick McGoohan also produced, wrote and directed much of the series—and took the brunt of the audiences’ howls of anger at the gloriously indecipherable finale. Only Twin Peaks can be mentioned in the same breath when it comes to television’s glory moments.

If you’re buying for someone who was between the ages of 15 and 35 in the 1970s, consider Saturday Night Live—The Complete First Season (Universal, $69.98). You may say that nothing has been so overexposed through he years as SNL, but this collection has a difference. It contains the complete version of every episode from the first season (1975-76). That means that not only do you get to see the original “Not Ready for Prime Time Players”—Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman and Gilda Radner, occasionally abetted by an extremely young Al Franken—when they were young and hungry, but you get to see the raw failures of a show that once existed to take risks. It’s not the show at its best, at least not always; but it is the show that made disco-era America sit up and take notice.

If your budget extends only to a single movie, good luck. But let me suggest one recent movie that deserves to become a seasonal perennial. Nominated for Best Foreign Language Feature in last year’s Oscars (and it should have won, or at least beat out the film that did win), Joyeux Noel (Sony, $26.96) is a handsomely produced drama based on the true story of the Christmas Eve in 1914 when British, French and German soldiers entrenched in a French battlefield lay down their arms for the day to celebrate the holiday as best they could. Rather than simply recreating a warm-fuzzy myth, writer-director Christian Carion uses it to examine the means through which governments rouse their peoples to war, enlisting teachers, clerics and the media to whip the public in a frenzy of bloodlust. Provocative and intensely moving, it’s one of the finest anti-war films I’ve ever seen.

N.B.: All of the prices quoted above are the manufacturer’s suggested retail prices; you can usually find these items for as much as one-third less.