Of the half dozen or so filmed versions of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, this one from 1951 with Alastair Sim as Scrooge is the most faithful to the spirit of the book.
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Good things just keep getting better.
Several years ago I reviewed VCI's "A Christmas Carol" on DVD, and since VCI have recently provided the film with a new cleanup and remastering, I thought it was time to revisit this favored classic.
Of the half dozen or so filmed versions of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," this one from 1951 with Alastair Sim as Scrooge is the most faithful to the spirit of the book. Yes, this is THE Christmas classic. I first saw it when my father took me to a Moose Lodge Christmas party presentation in 1953, and I believe I have seen it every year since. The movie is a pleasure to watch, especially on DVD, 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 Christmas and love. All of the familiar Dickens characters come to life in this delightful screen adaptation, but it is Alastair Sim in particular who is most perfectly cast. Not only does he make a fine curmudgeonly skinflint as Scrooge, but his changeover at the end of the story is a joy to behold. He is 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 to learn the value of kindness; or Scrooge's old partner, Jacob Marley (Michael Hordern), 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.
The all-British production was produced and directed by Brian Desmond Hurst ("Dangerous Moonlight," "Tom Brown's Schooldays"), and the music was composed by Richard Addinsell (whose most enduring composition was the "Warsaw Concerto"). This "Christmas Carol" is not a particularly extravagant production, to say the least, but it perfectly captures the flavor of Dickens' London, no doubt due to its being shot partly on location in very Dickens-like areas of the city.
Incidentally, the movie was released in England under the title "Scrooge" and only in the U.S. under its alternative Dickens title. I don't know why. The print used for this DVD transfer is the restored English version, and, thus, the movie is here introduced in the opening credits by its original British title, "Scrooge"; however, 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.
Video:
VCI Home Video may have established a first in this DVD offering a few years ago. They furnished the original black-and-white version of the film on one side of their disc and a colorized version on the other. Now, they offer the B&W and the colorized versions on separate discs or together on one disc, as reviewed here. Anyway, I am not a fanatical purist on the subject of colorization, but in most instances I have found the primary black-and-white renderings superior. I can't even imagine colorized accounts of "Casablanca," "The Maltese Falcon," or "Citizen Kane." Yet I rather liked the colorized treatment of Jose Ferrer's "Cyrano de Bergerac." Go figure.
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