Christmas Carol, A (Blu-ray)

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"Bah! Humbug!"

It seems as though I've been reviewing VCI's various disc transfers of "A Christmas Carol" for the past dozen holiday seasons. It hasn't been that long, but with each new edition, we get a better print, a better mastering, or a better restoration. Now, we get the best release so far, in high-definition Blu-ray.

Of the many film versions of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," this one from 1951 with Alastair Sim as Scrooge is the most faithful to the spirit of the book. It is, indeed, THE Christmas classic. I first saw it when my father took me to a Moose Lodge Christmas party around 1953, and I am sure I have seen it every year since. The movie is a pleasure to watch, especially on Blu-ray, a treat I hope to continue for a very long time.

I doubt there is anyone reading this review who doesn't know the story of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, his Christmas Eve visit by the ghosts of Christmas Past (Michael Dolan), Present (Francis De Wolff), and Yet To Come (C. Konarski), and his subsequent conversion to the true meaning of charity and love. All of the familiar Dickens characters come to life in this delightful screen adaptation, but it is Alastair Sim in particular whom the movie most perfectly casts. He makes a fine, curmudgeonly skinflint as Scrooge, and his changeover at the end of the story is a joy to behold. Indeed, every moment of Sim's portrayal is a joy; it's an amazingly nuanced realization that impresses more every time I watch it. By the time it's over, Sim's Scrooge has become truly a man reborn, a man who had lost his way along the paths of life and finds an exuberant return to a course of redemption.

Then, one cannot forget Scrooge's underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit (Mervyn Johns), whose relationship with the old man is really at the heart of the story. Or the little crippled boy, Tiny Tim (Glyn Dearman), who helps Scrooge learn the value of kindness; or Scrooge's old partner, Jacob Marley (Michael Hordern in a wonderfully melodramatic, over-the-top performance), returned from the dead shackled in ledgers and cash boxes; or Scrooge's first employer, dear old Mr. Fezziwig (Roddy Hughes); or Scrooge's nephew, Fred (Brian Worth), and his family; or the great loves of Scrooge's youth, his sister Fan (Carol Marsh) and his fiancée Alice (Rona Anderson); or young Marley (Patrick Macnee); or young Scrooge himself (George Cole).

Brian Desmond Hurst ("Dangerous Moonlight," "Tom Brown's Schooldays") produced and directed this all-British film, and Richard Addinsell (whose most enduring composition was the "Warsaw Concerto") composed the music. "A Christmas Carol" is not a particularly extravagant production, to be sure, but it captures perfectly the flavor of Dickens's London, no doubt due to its being shot partly on location in very Dickens-like areas of the city.

Incidentally, the movie's producers released the film in England under the title "Scrooge" and in the U.S. under its original Dickens title, "A Christmas Carol." The print used for this Blu-ray transfer is the restored English version, and, thus, we see the movie here announced in the opening titles by its British designation, "Scrooge." Fortunately, the keep-case cover continues to call it by its inspiration, "A Christmas Carol." A rose by any other name, it's still a great motion picture, made all the better by its crisp, new high-def transfer.

Video:
VCI Home Entertainment use a single-layer BD25 and an MPEG-2 audio-video codec to reproduce the black-and-white film on Blu-ray disc in its native aspect ratio, about 1.33:1. I have to admit that every time I see a B&W film transferred to disc in high definition, it amazes me how good it looks. Black-and-white can often look better than color, with a crystalline clarity and dimensionality that can be downright astonishing.