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Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 12/25/2021 [TheJamesMadison]

A Carol at Christmas

A Christmas Carol was written by Charles Dickens in 1843. Dickens, largely a secularist who wrote of the social problems in England that time, used his Christmas story to tell of a rich man learning that helping people with his wealth is of greater utility than hoarding it for his miserly self. The tale of Ebenezer Scrooge capitalized on the revitalization of the Christmas holiday in the Western world at the time, becoming instantly hugely popular and well received. Being in the public domain by the advent of film and retaining its original popularity for decades, A Christmas Carol was early fodder for filmmakers.

The first adaptation was in 1901, a six-minute short that condensed the smallish story to its absolute barest elements, removing the three spirits and just having Marley's ghost lead Scrooge through his journey across time. The story has been adapted at least 20 times over the years, most famously in 1951 starring Alastair Sim.

It's really not hard to see how the story ends up being so ripe for revisitation on a regular basis. The written story remains popular almost 180 years after it was written. It tells a timeless story of redemption, turning a curmudgeon into a good-hearted man (fodder for actors). Its popularity has made it almost synonymous with the idea of Christmas in the English speaking world. Of course filmmakers are going to decide that it's been long enough since the last one and that they have their own spin on the material that makes it unique every once in a while.

I tend to view these adaptations like one might view different productions of Hamlet. I don't see one as definitive, but I do have my favorites based on certain choices of what to highlight and how some things are presented. I've written before about how my favorite is the 30-minute animated version directed by Richard Williams (the man who did the animation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit), but I still find quite a bit to like about many of the others.

Scrooge

The centerpiece through most of these adaptations is the character of Ebenezer Scrooge. He's usually in every scene (occasionally omitted from scenes taking place at the Cratchit household or with his nephew), and it's a real opportunity for actors to take great advantage of the spotlight. The gold standard seems to be Alastair Sim's portrayal in the 1951 version, giving what is probably the most straightforward performance of Scrooge as written by Dickens. His antagonism towards Christmas and Bob's desire to take the whole day off is pretty much textbook curmudgeon. His fear at the appearance of Marley and antipathy towards starting his journey is just what you would expect. His elation at finding himself back in his bed after his look at his own possible future is the standard. There are very good reasons that the 1951 version maintains a level of popularity, and a lot of it has to do with Alastair Sim.

My favorite Scrooge, though, is George C. Scott.

Most other performances of Scrooge make Scrooge seem like a miserable man, a man so far down the rabbit hole that he doesn't even remember what anything like happiness could be. Scott goes in a completely different direction, though. He's having fun being mean.

Take the line about decreasing the surplus population. In every other version of that line, the sentiment is expressed with angry invective. In Scott's version, he sees it as a joke and laughs at it. He's a rich bastard who loves being at the top of society, being able to twist people to his will. I actually think this choice makes the eventual conversion more interesting. Going from miserable to happy is one thing, but going from happily terrible to happily good with a stop off in seriously repentant is a stronger arc than miserably terrible to happily good. Scott had a great understanding of who Scrooge was, what he could do differently from what came before, and a wonderful acting ability that he made Scrooge new again. He reinvigorated a well-known character with wonderful feeling.

My least favorite is probably Bill Murray's take in Scrooged. The modern version, directed by Richard Donner, just let Murray do whatever he wanted, and he ended up creating a really unappealing character in his variation Scrooge (the character's name is actually Frank Cross). He's so thoroughly unappealing that he never actually seems to change until his big moment in front of his cast and crew at the station which ends up feeling so forced and disingenuous that I find it grating. Other people really like the movie, though, so who knows?

Muppets


The version I know best is the one starring Michael Caine and...*checks notes*...Kermit the Frog.

My wife, TheDolleyMadison, grew up with The Muppet Christmas Carol, and our marriage has meant that I have seen this film probably more than any other movie. When we first got married, she wanted to watch it three times a year (Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas). It's now down to one (sometime around Christmas), but I've seen it probably three dozen times now.

And I like it. Michael Caine ends up being a very good Scrooge, never acting like he's in a silly movie with puppets but giving Scrooge the kind of menace and ultimate pathos required of the part. The use of the Muppets in key roles (Kermit as Bob Cratchit, Gonzo and Rizzo as the pair of narrators, Statler and Waldorf as the Marley Brothers, Miss Piggy as Mrs. Cratchit, and Fozzy the Bear as Fezziwig, among others) fit surprisingly well. It's also a musical, and the music's honestly not bad at all. I may prefer their take on Treasure Island overall, especially the music, but the combination of factors makes the film a surprisingly good and straightforward adaptation of the story.

Favorites


Do you have a favorite version of A Christmas Carol? Which one and why?

Movies of Today

Opening in Theaters:

The Matrix Resurrections

The King's Man

Movies I Saw This Fortnight:

The Matrix Resurrections (Rating 1.5/4) Full Review "That was disappointing but not entirely unexpected." [HBO Max]

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "It feels most like the kind of fun adventure tale that each movie seems to shoot for. It has a better balance between its tragic villains and adventurous antics so that it never gets weighed down with heavy moments, allowing them to come and go quickly to establish what they need to establish before moving on to something lighter." [Personal Collection]

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Rating 0.5/4) Full Review "This movie sucked." [Personal Collection]

Drums Along the Mohawk (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "Handsomely produced, surprisingly affecting, and well-acted from a troupe of actors, most of whom were familiar with Ford at that point, Drums Along the Mohawk was a very nice discovery in this trek through the man's body of work." [Library]

The Long Voyage Home (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "There's a surprising gentleness to the affair as men live the reality of a life at sea, the trials and inexorable return to the open ocean through danger. Wonderful to look at and filled with fine performances, it's a Ford that should never have been forgotten." [HBO Max]

How Green Was My Valley (Rating 2.5/4) Full Review "I kind of feel bad that I don't get into this film, but I don't. I mostly see a saccharine mess that leads towards a well-executed conclusion. The conclusion isn't enough to lift the rest of the movie in my eyes." [Library]

They Were Expendable (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "It was a box office bomb, though, since Americans were tired of war pictures when the film was released after the surrender of Japan, but I think it stands the test of time quite well." [Library]

Lethal Weapon (Rating 3/4) Full Review "I kind of love the first half of the film, where it's mostly a pure character drama, and I find the second half helped greatly by the work in the first half but kind of all over the place at the same time. It's never not entertaining, but it really could have been built a bit better to take advantage of the genre conventions it was dwelling in to greater effect." [Personal Collection]

Contact

Email any suggestions or questions to thejamesmadison.aos at symbol gmail dot com.
I've also archived all the old posts here, by request. I'll add new posts a week after they originally post at the HQ.