Updated for 2022 at last!
I’m something of a Christmas Carol fanatic. The Dickens
classic itself fascinates me. I think it's a lovely, compact, well-told
redemption story, and redemption stories are probably my favorite thematically
next to hero's journey stories (one of the reasons the original Star Wars
trilogy is so cool to me is that it features the Hero's Journey of Luke and the
Redemption of both Han Solo and Anakin Skywalker). While it's full of
references to the spiritual aspect of Christianity, contrast "witness what
it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!''
with the pedestrian, heavy-handed, negative-dwelling "You were born a
sinner." It's subversive in its own way, as is much of Dickens' writing
for the people, sometime I needn't point out to fellow radicals who've had to
deal with the now-entrenched ideology of "profits before people." And
it contains some amazing, evocative, flowery language. "This boy is
Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but
most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom,
unless the writing be erased...Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your
factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!'' Every other sentence
seems to have such gems. I could quote it endlessly, and do seem to around this
time of year, because that's when the TV cranks out the movies.
I've seen two theatrical productions of A Christmas Carol, one with
Robin and Steve (my starter
husband) at the Madison Square Garden theater which starred Roddy McDowell
shortly before his death. And, like the line he flubbed, there was definitely
"more of grave than of gravy about" him and this treacly musical
production. The other one, also seen with Steve, was a one-man show by Patrick
Stewart on Broadway, which basically consisted of him reading the story
verbatim and playing all the parts. That remains my favorite version of them
all, because in my opinion (and in Stewart's, I would warrant, although the
1999 TV movie he made didn't at all match expectations) the truer you remain to
the actual story Dickens wrote the better it is. The writing is that solid.
It's all in there, it doesn't really need anything added.
Now, that's not to say additions and revisions always fail on their own merits.
When Steve and I were married we amassed at least a dozen different versions of
the story on video, not including the various sitcoms that inevitably did their
own version of "Character Learns the True Meaning of Christmas.” I’ve read
that the story has been filmed over 200 times. About a dozen years ago
Robin put all the versions we could find on the desktop so I can pull them up
and watch them via Apple TV any time I want. And I now circulate a comparison
chart every year on my Facebook page, to see which versions come closest to the
book and where they deviate. You wouldn’t believe how the number of Cratchits vary
from version to version, or how many modern ones eschew the name Fan in favor
of Fran. And now I’ve finally updated the links to this and added two new
entries from 2022.
· The first filmed version I have was called "Scrooge: or Marley's
Ghost" in 1901, directed by W.R. Booth. It’s just kind of remarkable that
it exists at all, but there’s very little camera trickery, as one might
imagine.
· There was another silent version filmed by the Edison Company in 1910. It was
hard to sit through, but at least there were six Cratchits. I’ve seen one from
1901 that featured eight!
· Did you know Seymour Hicks played Scrooge twice on film? Once was in 1913’s
silent Old Scrooge
and then again in 1935’s Scrooge, where of
course he was a good deal older than in the Old version. Confused? You will be!
I gotta say though, I love the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come being a large
shadow of Hicks’ head through which we see his regular head wondering about the
future.
· A
Christmas Carol (1938) -–Reginald Owen was far too melodramatic and wimpy a
Scrooge for me to find the redemption believable. (I would loved to have seen
Lionel Barrymore do it, as originally planned!) Owen didn't play it crotchety
and mean so much as somewhat constipated. I loved that husband and wife Gene
and Kathleen Lockhart played Bob and Mrs. Cratchit, and their daughter June
(yes, Lassie's and Lost in Space's mom!) made her film debut here as one of the
Cratchet kids. [By the way, the Missus is never given a first name in the
original story; neither are the two siblings, a boy and a girl, closest to Tiny
Tim's age. Only Bob (Dad), Martha (the eldest), Belinda (the second eldest),
Peter (the oldest boy) and Tim. For those keeping track, that's six kids
altogether, bringing the number of family members to eight - not very
far-fetched in 19th century England! - so if you want to do a Christmas Carol
drinking game, I suggest you take one swig for every number of Cratchit children
the adaptation gets wrong.] It's been colorized, but is much better in B&W,
even though the versions I've seen all look like they used too much gauze on
the screen. An okay version, fairly true to the dialogue of the original. Leo
G. Carroll is outstanding as Marley's Ghost.
· Scrooge (1951)
– This is the Alistair Sim one, probably the best known one since it's the one
they replay all the time, and doesn't look too bad colorized, but I still
prefer the B&W. Sim is terrific and believable throughout. Hermoine
Baddeley can do no wrong as Mrs. C. I liked the addition of the scene showing a
younger Scrooge and Marley at their Trumpian best. And the two wan winsome
women characters, Alice (never given a name in the original) and Fan, are
present here as well. Very recommended.
· Hey look, "Shower
of Stars" did a "live" telecast in 1958 starring Fredric
March, Basil Rathbone, Ray Middleton (the Scotsman from 1772), a young Robert
Wagner and an even younger Bonnie Franklin. Yowza! Also I wish they hadn’t filled
it with cringey songs.
· Mr.
Magoo's Christmas Carol (1962) – Surprisingly, some of the non-musical
parts of the cartoon are a pretty decent adaptation of Dickens' tale.
(Fortunately I'm not the only one who thinks this either; check out this overview from John Kenrick,
about halfway down the page.) And the songs by Styne and Merrill are cute and
sappy and I like that kind of thing sometimes, in its proper place, if
it's not overdone. I'm sorry, "I'm All Alone In The World" still
brings a tear.
· A Carol for Another Christmas (1964)
– That’s the link to the YouTube video of the entire presentation, well worth
sitting through. It’s more of a pastiche than a retelling of the classic, but
its heart couldn’t be in a righter place. Rod Serling wrote this as the first in a planned series of
television specials developed to promote the United Nations and educate viewers
about its mission. Peter Sellers is scarily brilliant,
as usual, in his first performance after his near-fatal heart attack. The plot
is nicely synopsized on Wikipedia,
of course.
· Scrooge (1970)
– Albert Finney looks very good as a young man, and actually won a Golden Globe
for his performance here (he did seem to be one of those actors who spoke songs
rather than singing them, but his dancing wasn’t bad). There are bits of it I
really like, particularly the incidental characters, but OMG every time Alec
Guinness minces about and chews the scene, particularly in hell, I cringed.
Hard to believe this was only seven years before Star Wars.
· The Stingiest Man in Town (1978)
– There were a few animated versions around this time (one featuring Alistair
Sim reprising his role, one with Michael Hordern and very lovely moody
animation, a Bugs Bunny version out the same year, and Mickey’s Christmas Carol
which came along a few years later featuring Uncle Scrooge as, well, you
guess), but this is the Rankin/Bass version. Notable for Scrooge's snuff box,
which he always carried around but never worked properly because, yes, he was
too stingy to give away a good sneeze. Wince with me, boys and girls.
· Rich Little's A Christmas Carol
(1978) – I only have vague memories
of this, but I do recall it was fun and well done. He played Scrooge with a
W.C. Fields impression, Bob Cratchit as done by Paul Lynde, Scrooge's nephew
Fred as played by Johnny Carson... you get the idea. Probably worth seeking
out. Instead of chains, Marley's ghost as played by Nixon lugs around 18½
minutes of tape. Okay, it's dated, but so am I.
· An American Christmas Carol (1979)
– Henry Winkler with bad makeup. Can he now receive credit for jumping two
sharks?
· A Christmas Carol (1984) –
George C. Scott remains a favorite Scrooge, and this one of my favorite
adaptations save the Stewart one-man show reading. I love the atmosphere.
Captures much more of the spirit of Dickens' time than the letter of his book,
but I don't mind. Frightening and heartwarming and brilliant in all the right
places.
· Scrooged (1988) – I found this
pastiche just okay. Murray was fair but not all that terrific, and the last
15-20 minutes still make me wince. But you cannot beat Carol Kane and David
Johansen as, respectively, the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, and the
rest of the stunt casting is equally eclectic. It's got Michael J. Pollard and
Jamie Farr and Mabel King and Robert Goulet and Buddy Hackett and Lee Majors
and Michael O'Donoghue and Paul Shaffer and Mary Lou Retton... it's kind of
like an episode of the Love Boat crossed with SNL or something. Very weird.
· Blackadder's Christmas Carol
(1988) – Again, what's not to love? The twist here, for the half dozen of
you who may not know, is that Blackadder starts out a wonderful, generous soul
and by the end of the movie is shown the error of his ways and becomes a miser.
· The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
– "Light the lamp, not the rat, light the lamp, not the rat!"
You'll not ever hear me say a bad word about this one. A lot of fun. And it's
got Scruffy-Boy extraordinaire Michael Caine as Scrooge. Watch it again, you
know you want to.
· A Christmas Carol (1999) –
Patrick Stewart makes a fine Scrooge as well (how could he not, he's all but
memorized the story after all those Broadway performances), but something was
lacking from this, at least for me. For whatever reason I was expecting more,
but I think they took more liberties than I would have liked. Still, overall
solid performances, and a very classy rendition.
· A Christmas Carol (2000) – I
call this "the real Scruffy-Boy Christmas Carol." It was as
wonderful as the Williams one was bland. It stars Ross Kemp (from Eastenders)
as Eddie Scrooge, a nasty loan shark. It's actually a combination of Christmas
Carol and Groundhog Day. It starts out a bit rough but it's worth sitting
through and seeing it to the end; please do so if you can.
· A Diva's Christmas Carol (2000)
– I know garlic wards off vampires, there has to be some herb you can ring
round the windows (mistletoe?) to prevent this pastiche from ever coming into
your house again. Bland city, as to be expected from one of the whitest black
women around. I couldn't even watch the entire thing, and seeing as how much I
love the story that's saying something.
· Christmas
Carol: The Movie (2001) – Neither movie nor so much Christmas Carol, I
fear. This joint European-British animated feature seemed overly enamored (as
so many are) of putting its own imprint on the story, and of following some
stupid unwritten rule that if it’s an animated film it’s mandatory to feature
cute animals – in this case, mice. One in the hospital where Scrooge’s old love
Belle works as a nurse, and one who’s actually the miser’s pet. As Wikipedia
says, "Both Belle and Old Joe notably have bigger roles in the film.
Unlike the book as well as other film adaptations, Belle does not marry and
have children with another man. She is a nurse. Old Joe is a henchman of
Scrooge who arrests or robs people who owe Scrooge debt but Scrooge fires him
after mending his ways. Also in the film Marley's ghost haunts Scrooge before
he goes home and Scrooge is notably younger as he has auburn hair and is
middle-aged rather than being elderly.” It’s a bloody mess.
· A Christmas Carol: The Musical
(2004) – Does Jason Alexander’s Marley make one long for the comparatively
subtle performance of Alec Guinness? Then this musical probably isn’t for you.
But will you watch it anyway? Depends upon your Jane Krakowski tolerance, I
suppose. Alan Menken’s music is just fine, and it’s got all the wonder one
would expect from a Halmi production, which is to say the cheese is part of it,
and this one doesn’t even include mice.
· Disney’s
A Christmas Carol (2009) – I like this more every time I watch it,
particularly by comparison with some earlier efforts. Jim Carrey does a nice
job with a variety of accents from non-estuary London (as Scrooge) to Irish
(the Ghost of Christmas Past) to Liverpudlian (Christmas Present), and it
sticks remarkably close to the book, give or take the “Mr. Scrooge’s Wild Ride”
sequence set in the future.
And now, two actual versions from this actual year, one a retelling of a musical version and the other the most brilliant pastiche I’ve ever watched:
· Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (2022) – Before Leslie Bricusse passed away last year, he and his associates finished this revisiting of the 1970 musical as an animated venture. Visually it’s absolutely stunning, and the added songs (especially “Later Never Comes”) are quite lovely, in addition to at least four songs I recognize from the past. If you’re looking for Dickens’ prose it’s nowhere to be found, and I’m not sure why the characters make fun of names like “Scrooge” and “Fezziwig” (part of Dickens’ charm was in the names) and yet feel some weird compulsion to change nephew Fred’s name to Harry and sister Fan’s name to Jen. Oh, and there’s a dog. That’s right, a doggie, even though the original story clearly outlines, “Even the blindmen's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, ‘No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!’” Dogs No Like Scrooge. But watch this (currently on Netflix) for the stunning computer animation, and if you can tune out the auto-tune Luke Evans acquits himself well.
· Spirited (2022) – I’m not a Will Ferrell fan, never even bothered to see Elf. Although I’d probably go out of my way to watch Ryan Reynolds in ads for just about anything (and have even passed along a few here in the past). That said, this pastiche has quickly become my new favorite Christmas movie, and Ferrell is the heart and soul of it. It’s both winkingly cynical and unbelievably moving and sincere (unlike Scrooged, which was for me just the first) and I’m still not sure how they pulled that off. The dance numbers are beyond stunning and exhaustingly energetic, and Octavia Spencer is an absolute treasure. Her “The View From Here” is a total tear-jerker of a song. Very worth it, if you have AppleTV+, and I couldn’t recommend it more highly.
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