Scrooge on Screen

Considering my enthusiasm for Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” it should come as no surprise that film adaptations of the novella are on the list of movies that the Pearce family like to watch during the Advent and Christmas seasons. Here are our favorites.

George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge

I confess to being an unabashed aficionado of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. It was one of the “twelve great books” included in my book of that title and was on the list of 100 great works I compiled at the conclusion of my book, Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know.

Considering my enthusiasm for Dickens’ perennially popular parable, it should come as no surprise that film adaptations of the novella are on the list of films that the Pearce family like to watch during the Advent and Christmas seasons. Although we have four such adaptations to choose from amongst our Christmas DVDs (yes, we still watch DVDs!), we don’t possess Scrooge, the 1970 musical version, which I don’t believe that I’ve seen since I was a child. This version is the favourite of my good friend and fellow Troubadour, Dale Ahlquist, President of the Chesterton Society. His recommendation would be enough in itself but the all-star cast certainly adds to the allure. Who would not want to see Albert Finney as Scrooge, Alec Guinness as Jacob Marley, Edith Evans as the Ghost of Christmas Past and Kenneth More as the Ghost of Christmas Present? (One wonders whether Dale Ahlquist’s preference for this version might have something to do with the fact that Alec Guinness and Kenneth More have both played Chesterton’s priest-detective Father Brown in screen adaptations.)

As the foregoing would suggest, I’m hoping that Santa Claus, perhaps in his Dickensian guise as Father Christmas, might put the DVD of the musical Scrooge under the tree this Christmas. I’ve dropped a subtle hint to Mrs. Pearce, whom I believe is in direct communication with the great man himself.

Proceeding from the one adaptation on the wish list to the four adaptations that we already own, I’ll begin with the one which is probably the most popular with children. This is The Muppet Christmas Carol, dating from 1992 and starring Michael Caine as Scrooge, Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit and Miss Piggy as Emily Cratchit. To be honest, I had made a point of not watching this. I’ve never been particularly fond of the Muppets, which makes me close to being a heretic in some circles, and I feared and expected that the gravitas and morality of Dickens’ story would be trivialized or even lampooned. I was wrong. The film is surprisingly good, primarily due to Michael Caine’s splendid portrayal of the old miserly humbug. Apparently, Caine approached the role by treating each of the Muppet characters as real flesh-and-blood people, thereby humanizing the dramatic dynamic and preserving sufficient gravitas to leaven the levitas into the risen life of the story’s theme of resurrection.

The oldest of the four adaptations that we possess is the 1938 version, starring Reginal Owen as Scrooge and Gene and Kathleen Lockhart as Mr. and Mrs. Cratchit. This is spoiled for me by the poor quality of the recording and is the least favoured and therefore least watched of those from which we have to choose.

The third version is the British-American made-for-television adaptation, released in 1984, and starring George C. Scott as Scrooge, Frank Finlay as the Ghost of Jacob Marley, Edward Woodward as the Ghost of Christmas Present and Susannah York as Mrs. Cratchit. I approached this adaptation with a sense of trepidation born of prejudice, the latter being rooted in a presumption that an American could not play Ebenezer Scrooge convincingly. How wrong I was! George C. Scott puts in a sterling and convincing performance, portraying Scrooge as being as indefatigably miserable as he is incorrigibly miserly. Such handling of the pre-conversion Scrooge made the Christmas morning conversion scene all the more powerful and moving and the subsequent enkindled joy all the more miraculous. Another highlight for me of this version is Edward Woodward’s larger-then-life portrayal of the larger-than-life character of the Ghost of Christmas Present.

And so, saving the best to last, we come to Alastair Sim’s classic performance as Scrooge in the 1951 adaptation, which adopted the title Scrooge, rather than A Christmas Carol. The film is buttressed by some great supporting roles by seasoned and youthful actors, some of the latter of whom would become major stars in their own right in later years, but it is Sim who steals the show. Indeed, and to continue with the gothic image of buttressing, we can say that the great support that Sim received from the other cast members, enabled his own performance to ascend to levels that would not have been possible without them. Mervyn Johns is a memorably amiable Bob Cratchit; Jack Warner is a jovially cynical Mr. Jorkin; Ernest Thesiger is a creepily caricatured undertaker; and George Cole and Patrick Macnee present convincingly the youthful iterations of Scrooge and Marley as ominous foreshadows of the monsters they will become.

But it is Alastair Sim’s Scrooge which makes this film the triumph that it is. The manner in which he dances with sheer delight at the moment of epiphany on Christmas morning is also a sheer delight for the viewer, as is the moment that he dances the polka with his long-neglected niece. These are moments of eucatastrophe, to employ the word that Tolkien coined to describe the sudden joyous turn in a story which is the true deliverance from darkness and evil that great stories offer. It is the joy of the happy ending. It is the moment when we know, in the words of Tiny Tim, that God has truly blessed us every one.

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The featured image is courtesy of IMDb.