Scrooge 1951

[6.0/10] It’s not Scrooge’s fault that I’ve watched umpteen other adaptations of A Christmas Carol, I’ve seen everyone from Patrick Stewart and Bill Murray take on the role of Ebenezer and leading lights as luminous as Mickey Mouse and Kermit the Frog become Bob Cratchit. There’s a reason Charles Dickens’ classic has been so venerable. The bones of the story win out. But it’s impossible for the tale to have the same impact on the tenth version you see that it does the first time you witness a man’s life changed by three spirits. That's particularly unfair to star Alistair Sim and director Brian Desmond Hurst’s version from 1951, which was the ur-adaptation many later interpretations borrowed from.

So what stands out when coming to a film like this that is both novel and roundly familiar is what differentiates it from other renditions of the story. And here, the first thing to stand out is the overacting. Sim snarls and whimpers and exalts. His girlfriend, Alice, crumples with an exaggerated sigh in case you didn’t quite understand that their break-up was sad. Even little Tiny Tim goes over-the-top giddy at the prospect of pudding in a fashion that makes you wonder if he stumbled over from a jello commercial. Naturalism is not an inherent virtue, but it’s hard to connect with these characters, and their story, when everything is pumped up to a larger-than-life emotional amplitude.

And yet, the biggest virtue of Scrooge is that it delves deeper into Ebenezer’s backstory, and his central motivations for why he became the grinchy curmudgeon he is now, than any other adaptation. Heck, given the disproportionate time the film spends on “Xmas Past” over “Xmas Present” and “Xmas Future”, you could rightfully rename this one “Ebenezer Begins.”

Hurst delves deeper into Scrooge’s family history. A choice moment at Ebenezer’s childhood schoolhouse makes plain that Scrooge’s father resented him for his mother’s death in childbirth, a sense of resentment and loneliness the man carried with him for the rest of his life. Other adaptations have connected Scrooge’s lingering affections for his sister Fan, with his eventual embrace of her son, Fred. But the 1951 version adds emotional weight to Scrooge’s estrangement from an eventual reunion with his nephew.

In this interpretation, Scrooge is a vessel for the repetition of his father’s sins, seeming to harbor disdain for the boy on account of the way Fan died in childbirth bearing him. Only in the spirit’s visit, set after his younger self stormed off, does he realize that with her last words, Fan asked her brother to look after her child. With that hidden history, his acceptance of his nephew’s invitation, and humble request for forgiveness, does not merely represent a man whose heart has turned, but one who means to make up for the same mistakes that turned him into a twisted old miser, and to honor the dying wish of the one person in the world who seemed to truly love him.

Hurst and screenwriter Noel Langley also account for how Ebenezer turned into such a cold and cruel businessman. The script examines more deeply his time as a clerk for Fezziwig and turn to the darkside. The middle section of the film sees him torn away from the jolly proprietor, whose philosophy is one of generosity and the principle that there's more to life than money. Instead, he’s taken under the wing of Jorkins, an original character and rank embezzler who teaches his seconds, Mr. Scrooge and Mr. Marley, to be ruthless and venal in their professional endeavors if they want to succeed, until they run even kindly Mr. Fezziwig himself out of business.

There too, it adds weight to Scrooge’s reconciliation with someone in the present, the timeless Mr. Cratchit. When he remembers the kindness and generousness Fezziwig showed him, the fortune or joy he spread upon the world far outweighed by any lightness in his wallet, it makes his stingy and demanding treatment of his own clerk seem like a dishonor to the memory of the man who showed him how it’s done.

The fable of Scrooge’s long descent into darkness also carries the whiff of Dickens’ traditional social commentary. As a film release in the postwar boom, there’s an air of lionizing the past and fearing the coldness of a technological future, as Fezziwig praises preserving the old ways and others wring their hands about time-tested methods replaced with soulless mechanical means. Not long removed from the Great Depression, Scrooge’s mentor in villainy misappropriates funds and laughs about it when caught, strong-arming his benefactor into admitting that exposing his crimes would ruin them, and leveraging the situation into installing his two proteges as the head of the company. The sense of ruthless business techniques overtaking a kinder, simpler world of commerce pervades the film.

And like many adaptations, it’s not afraid to show the impact of such a heartless approach. There is more time spent in poorhouses, with beggars on the street, with children working in shady shops to make ends meet, than in most realizations of the yuletide novel. The hardship is counterbalanced by a more explicitly religious bent, as the Ghost of Xmas Present invokes Jesus himself, not just an amorphous “Xmas spirit” inhabiting the hearts of those who nonetheless find joy in such humble circumstances. These all reflect different cultural viewpoints, more willing to both confront the consequences of commercial greed and to point to worship and belief as a tonic than later mainstream works.

So with so much going on under the hood, why does Scrooge flounder so much? Because it’s not nearly as engaging on film as it is on paper. Despite some genuinely frightening moments amid the yowls of Marley, some legitimate cheer in the Cratchit household (and not just because young kids are gulping down gin punch for some reason), and some true mirth in Ebenezer himself in the final reel, so many of these key moments feel over-performed and lacking psychological depth.

The pacing is also difficult. Beyond the unbalanced nature of the film which prioritizes flashbacks over the events of the here and now and the warnings of the future, scenes tend to drag, with some solid framings but languid direction that fail to make these momentous scenes seem lively. Despite coming in at a lean ninety minutes or so, my wife (who liked the film better than I did) was convinced it was a two-and-a-half-hour epic. That speaks to the lack of pep and momentum that weighs Hurst’s rendition down.

Maybe those scenes wouldn’t seem so long if I didn’t already know these beats by heart. The benefit of adapting a well-known work is that there’s interest, expectation, a cultural well to pull from so that you don’t have to re-explain or reintroduce every feature and tone. But it makes each new (or new-to-you) version an exercise in searching for what it does different, does better, than all the other interpretations you’ve watched over the years. That's not fair to this film, or any film, but it’s a reminder that like the ghosts who stir Ebenezer’s heart, each take on the tale of a man who realizes he’s not too old to change, must remake the story anew, as affecting and resonant all over again.