Director – Clive Donner, Screenplay – Roger O. Hirson, Based on the Novel A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens, Producers – Alfred R. Kelman & William F. Storke, Photography – Tony Imi, Music – Nick Bicat, Special Effects – Martin Gutteridge & Graham Longhurst, Production Design – Roger Murray-Leach. Production Company – Entertainment Partners.
Cast
George C. Scott (Ebenezer Scrooge), Edward Woodward (Ghost of Christmas Present), Angela Pleasance (Ghost of Christmas Past), David Warner (Bob Cratchit), Frank Finlay (Jacob Marley), Roger Rees (Fred Holywell), Susannah York (Mrs Cratchit), Anthony Walters (Tiny Tim), Mark Strickson (Young Scrooge), Caroline Langrishe (Janet Holywell), Lucy Gutteridge (Belle Fezziwig), Nigel Davenport (Silas Scrooge), Joanne Whalley (Fan Scrooge), Timothy Bateson (Mr Fezziwig), Michael Gough (Mr Poole), John Quarmby (Mr Hacking), Liz Smith (Mrs Dilber), Brian Pettifer (Ben), Catherine Hall (Meg)
Plot
As Christmas nears, Ebenezer Scrooge sneers “bah humbug” on all any celebration and offers of goodwill from his employee Bob Cratchit and nephew Fred Honeywell. That evening, as Scrooge prepares for bed, he receives a visit from his former business partner Jacob Marley, warning of the terrible torment in the afterlife that Scrooge will suffer if he persists in his miserly ways. Scrooge dismisses this. As Marley departs, he tells Scrooge that he will be visited by three ghosts – of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come. The ghosts appear, each showing Scrooge the happiness in his life he has forgotten, the misery he causes in the present and the grim fate that awaits him.
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) is an undisputed classic. Its’ story of a miser’s redemption has been adapted to the screen and television more than 40 times to date in numerous different forms, parodies and modernisations. It is impossible to turn on tv at Christmas-time and not see one of the various versions screening. (See below for the other versions).
This was an adaptation that was made for CBS tv but ended up sufficiently impressing that it was given a theatrical release. It has fine production design with street locations that are dressed and costumed to give a strong feel of Victorian England. Not to mention there is a top cast including George C. Scott imported as Scrooge and a host of other British names popular in the era such as David Warner, Susannah York, Edward Woodward, Nigel Davenport and Frank Finlay. There are also a few faces that were not quite on the radar such as a very young Joanne Whalley as Scrooge’s sister Fan and later-to-be Doctor Who (1963-89, 2005- ) companion Mark Strickson as the young Scrooge.
This is a very faithful adaptation of A Christmas Carol, right down to the descriptions that Dickens gives of the ghosts to the script even using sections of Dickens’s dialogue direct. This includes scenes that every other film version drops such as Christmas Present showing Scrooge the two children Ignore and Want, and the scene where Scrooge’s cleaning lady (Liz Smith) sells off his things. There are a few scenes added over Dickens with Scrooge and his comrades at the exchange, more of his visit to Fred Holywell and a scene where the Ghost of Christmas Present takes him to see a homeless family in the street.
Ebenezer Scrooge (George C. Scott) (r) and The Ghost of Christmas Present (Edward Woodward) (l)
This version gets a lot of the story right. My only real issue is the casting of George C. Scott. Scott had established himself as a physical, larger-than-life actor. As Scrooge, he seems far too genial and agreeable, going along where the ghosts tell him to and displaying sympathy for Tiny Tim and the homeless far too easily. It is there in the dialogue but there is not enough of Scrooge’s rancorousness in Scott’s performance. He just isn’t mean and miserly enough.
Clive Donner (1926-2010) was a director who emerged out of British tv. He had a modest hit with the Peter Sellers comedy What’s New Pussycat? (1965). In genre material, Donner also directed the horror comedy Vampira/Old Dracula (1975); the Gene Roddenberry tv pilot Spectre (1977) about occult investigators; a theatrically-released tv movie version of The Thief of Baghdad (1978); the Get Smart movie The Nude Bomb (1980); Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981); the Arthurian legends tv movie Arthur the King (1983); and a version of Babes in Toyland (1986).
Other adaptations of A Christmas Carol include:– a number of lost silent adaptations made respectively in 1901, 1908, 1910, 1913, 1916, 1923 and 1928. Sound versions include:– Scrooge (1935), a British sound version with Seymour Hicks as Scrooge; A Christmas Carol (1938), an American version with Reginald Owen; a Spanish adaptation (1947); Scrooge (1951), a British production starring Alistair Sim; Scrooge (1970), a British-made musical adaptation starring Albert Finney; a short animated version A Christmas Carol (1971) from animator Richard Williams; Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983), a 25 minute animated short from Disney where the Scrooge role was played by Scrooge McDuck and Mickey Mouse was cast as Bob Cratchit; the modernised updating Scrooged (1988) with Bill Murray; The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), which enacted the tale with the Muppets and starred Michael Caine as Scrooge; a British-German animated adaptation Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001); the conservative-backed An American Carol (2008) where a liberal filmmaker is persuaded of their ways; the animated Barbie in A Christmas Carol (2008); and Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture animated A Christmas Carol (2009) starring Jim Carrey. TV adaptations include A Christmas Carol (1943), a 60 minute live version, which was apparently one of the first ever experimental tv broadcasts; The Christmas Carol (1949), a half-hour American adaptation starring Taylor Holmes; A Christmas Carol (1950), a British adaptation starring Bransby Williams; A Christmas Carol (1953), a half-hour American adaptation starring Noel Leslie; a German production (1960); Carol for Another Christmas (1964), a production written by Rod Serling as a United Nations Special that updated the tale as an anti-war parable; a Canadian production Mr Scrooge (1964); A Christmas Carol (1977), a British production starring Michael Hordern; Scrooge (1978), a Canadian production starring Warren Graves; Rankin-Bass’s one-hour animated adaptation The Stingiest Man in Town (1978); An American Christmas Carol (1979), starring Henry Winkler, which updated the story to the Depression era; Skinflint: A Country Christmas Carol (1979), starring Hoyt Axton, a bizarre American adaptation populated entirely by Country and Western singers; A Christmas Carol (1981), an American adaptation starring William Paterson; A Christmas Carol (1982), an American adaptation starring Richard Hilger; a French tv adaptation (1984); Blackadder’s Christmas Carol (1988), a sardonic take on the story using the characters from the popular British tv series Blackadder (1983-9); Scrooge: A Christmas Sarah (1990), a British version that cast Scrooge as a woman (Sarah Greene); A Christmas Carol (1994), a British-made ballet adaptation; A Christmas Carol (1997), an American-made animated adaptation; Ebenezer (1997), a bizarre American adaptation that recast the tale as a Western starring Jack Palance; Ms. Scrooge (1997), an American version that also cast the role with a woman (Cicely Tyson); A Christmas Carol (1999), an American production starring Patrick Stewart; A Christmas Carol (2000), a modernised adaptation where Scrooge (Ross Kemp) was a petty loanshark; A Diva’s Christmas Carol (2000) with Vanessa Williams as a self-absorbed pop singer; Scrooge and Marley (2001), a one-hour adaptation starring Dean Jones; Hallmark’s sex-reversed A Carol Christmas (2003) starring Tori Spelling; Hallmark’s musical adaptation A Christmas Carol (2004) with Kelsey Grammer; the Italian-made A Christmas Carol (2004); the modernised Karroll’s Christmas (2004) starring Tom Everett Scott; the Doctor Who tv special A Christmas Carol (2010) where a time-travelling Doctor becomes the Ghosts of Christmases Past and Present to intergalactic miser Michael Gambon; the low-budget Canadian-made A Christmas Carol (2015); the dark adult BBC mini-series A Christmas Carol (2019) starring Guy Pearce; and the modernised musical Spirited (2022) starring Ryan Reynolds. Also of interest is The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) about Charles Dickens and the writing of A Christmas Carol.
