I hadn't watched this since I was a lad. I did not necessarily have high hopes of it standing up to my memory of it but even then it was a bit of a disappointment.
Even making special consideration for it being a musical cannot make up for the seriously wonky moments and ideas. I'll try to be as fair as possible.
It's a musical so it's useless to criticise some of the things particular to this version as they are standard film-musical stylings and when done well they can elevate films of this type. Scrooge is very colourful and, for the most part, the budget for the film is up there on the screen. The sets and most of the costumes look great. The musical in fact allows the story to be told bigger than life which is consistent with Dickens' writing which was never meant to be naturalistic or realistic. They were meant to be caricature. So the format and style are quite suited to telling A Christmas Carol. Albert Finney's acting performance as Scrooge is fine from beginning to end. Mostly.
Unfortunately for this film-musical, the things that really let it down are the music and the filming. With the exception of Thank You Very Much and some of I Hate People, the songs are entirely forgettable. The tune which Scrooge sings in his old classroom betrays the intention for Rex Harrison to have played the title character and has little impact when delivered by Finney. During the Happiness song and most of the Fezziwig flashback, the younger Ebeneezer looks like a walking tailor's dummy or one of the pod people from Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers, totally unengaged and lifeless. In this respect at least Scrooge departs from the book and I can't think of any good reason for this. It's just puzzling. I know that musical theater and film always involve a little ironic nod to audience to allow you to not take it too seriously, but Sir Alec Guinness's performance seems completely out of place even in a jovial extravaganza such as Scrooge. What is he doing? Mincing about like a guy on an imaginary hobby-horse?. I know he's a ghost and ghosts have licence to be weird in one way or another, but again this is just puzzling.
For a big budget ghost story movie the transitions between Scrooge's chamber and the visitations of the spirits are rather uninspired and lazy. Apart from the ghoulish nature of the spirits which Marley and Scrooge fly amongst and the spirit of the future's rather laughable (or shocking depending on your point of view) revelation at the end there is no attempt to use technique to make Scrooge's hauntings as vivid , in a filmic sense, as they ought to be. No attempt has been made in production to have scenes blend together in any delightful or satisfying manner. It's a pity because, like I said, the movie is almost a visual treat thanks to the large format filming but there is no cohesive visual sense throughout.
As for the hell sequence. A bit of artistic licence is always allowed. The idea of Scrooge being the devil's clerk and locked away in an infernally freezing tank to account for his life for all eternity is a clever idea. What's not so clever, (apart from Sir Alec's baffling weirdness), is the less than impressive set which looks like it was built for a Doctor Who episode years before and meant to have been shot in black & white video. It cheapens the film considerably.
I don't hate this movie but I don't agree with some of the posts here which credit the fidelity of the film to the original story. Here's why.
* Bob Cratchit's wardrobe - makes him look like he was one of Scrooge's nephew's dinner guests. That coat alone would have cost him about two months worth of his 15 bob a week wages.
* The Ghost Of Christmas Past is suffragette. Why? In the book it is a spirit with the appearance of a man that Scrooge cannot quite be sure if they are very old or very young and they carry a cap which Scrooge asks them to put on and dim the light they give.
* The Ghost Of Christmas Past only seems to advise Scrooge to take a drink an lighten up. What happened to ignorance and want and "doom"?
* The whole point of the future spirits visit is that Scrooge is shown how unkind people might be about the death of someone who is seen to be unkind in life but Scrooge is not aware or won't acknowledge that it is his death , and not someone like him, that is being foreshadowed. The idea that he might unwittingly share the celebratory mood is nice but it does not work on its own. The hell scene in no way makes up for this.
* There is doubt in Scrooge's mind as to whether it all really happened or not. Why is this added? It does not appear in the book in fact Scrooge is quite unequivocal about his experience.
* Lastly, this is a fault of quite a few adaptations actually. Scrooge is shown in the end as a suddenly gregarious nutcase running through the streets and engaging everyone in his own merry capers as if they had no choice. For a film-musical this is understandable but for me it does not resonate as well if Scrooge does not show a little bit of contrition and hesitancy when gallavanting with people he'd previously rebuked.
@Twitzkrieg - Glasgow's FOREMOST authority
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