A Christmas Carol
Format:
Black-and-white feature film
Country:
USA
Production company:
MGM
Year:
1938
Length:
69 minutes
Setting:
London, but oddly, earlier than the book – the opening caption declares that the events take place “More than a century ago,” which given that it was released in 1938 and the book came out in 1843 places it prior to when Dickens wrote it. “More than a century” could still (just about) make it Victorian, technically, so I’m placing it in the “Victorian” category on the blog rather than create a new category for Georgian or whatever William’s reign counts as!
It would help, of course, if the Ghost of Christmas Present’s line about his brothers was as specific as it is in some adaptations, but similarly to the book he just gives a general “some 1800” when numbering them.
Background:
This is, as far as I can tell, the first American production of the Carol to be made with sound, and following three years after the 1935 British version is the second major ‘talkie’ adaptation of the tale. As I understand it, it continued for some years through the middle of the 20th century to be the most familiar adaptation of the story, certainly to American viewers at least, with something of an afterlife on television in that country as an annual tradition on some local stations.
MGM were, and remained for decades afterwards, one of the biggest film companies in the English-speaking world. Although they had at this point in the late 1930s begun setting up a production arm in the UK, this film was made in the United States. A colourised version was created in the late 1980s, but as with many of these versions now appears to be much harder to find than the original black and white version, which is probably no bad thing.
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| It's not as obvious in a screen grab, but Leo G. Carroll really does look very like John Le Mesurier, also a Marley nearly 40 years later, at times. |
Cast and crew:
Reginald Owen as Scrooge was a British actor who had been living in the States for almost twenty years by this point; he has a decent enough stab at the part, although you do get the sense at times that his accent has undergone a fair amount of Americanisation. He was not the first choice for the role; the film was supposed to star American actor Lionel Barrymore, who had become associated with the character in an annual radio adaptation in the States. Arthritis meant that Barrymore had to back out of the project; he would later get the opportunity to appear in a rather better-remembered Christmas film when he played Mr Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life.
Speaking of the accents, they do on the whole stay British, but there are a few exceptions where they are out-and-out American, such as the character of Bess, while John O’Day as Peter Cratchit goes what we would now regard as full-on Dick Van Dyke. Oddly, a singing choir in a street scene early on sounds very distinctively American, too.
Canadian actor Gene Lockhart makes for a rather rotund-looking Cratchit, appearing alongside his real-life wife, Kathleen, and daughter June as fellow members of the Cratchit family. Ann Rutherford as the Ghost of Christmas Past later appeared as Scarlett O’Hara’s sister in Gone With the Wind, and one of the Bennett sisters in the 1940 MGM version of Pride and Prejudice.
Two faces probably stand out the most to the more casual fan of vintage film and television. Leo G. Carroll, who plays Marley – looking uncannily like John Le Mesurier, who takes the same role in the 1977 BBC version – played Mr Waverley in The Man from UNCLE in the 1960s, and Tiny Tim actor Terry Kilburn is probably most recognisable from another juvenile role in a much bigger MGM success the year after A Christmas Carol – he played young Colley in Goodbye, Mr Chips. He is, at time of writing on December 1st 2016, also still alive and last month celebrated his 90th birthday. Happy birthday, Mr Kilburn!
Thanks to the joys of the internet, I can pass on the pleasingly random fact that Cliff Severn, in the minor role of the boy Scrooge sends to the poulterer at the end, later went on to play for the US national cricket team.
Edwin L. Marin, who directed the film, seems to have had quite a long and prolific career behind the camera, but without ever helming anything really of the first rank. Hugo Butler, a Canadian, provided the screenplay, and is probably most notable for having fallen victim to the infamous Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s. Producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz went on to have a higher-profile career as a director, including winning the Oscar for best director twice, in 1949 and 1950, and in 1964 helming a US television adaptation of the Carol written by Rod Serling, called Carol for Another Christmas.
Underdone Potato:
For its first few minutes, this seems like a completely different take on the Carol – telling the story through Fred’s eyes. He’s the main character in the opening scenes, as he makes his way to Scrooge’s office, bumping into Peter and Tim Cratchit, and it’s he rather than Bob who has a go at sliding on the ice in the street.
This might be an interesting – although difficult to pull off, given he’s not party to any of the main action! – take on the story, but once Fred has got to the office and passed some booze on to Bob, the story falls back onto more traditional lines for a while. We get the familiar arguments between Scrooge and Fred, as well as the two charitable gentlemen – given names in this version, Trill and Rummidge – and Scrooge and Bob’s conversation at the end of the day.
Things then go rather off the rails, as Bob celebrates leaving the office for Christmas by joining a group of boys throwing snowballs at people. He ends up knocking Scrooge’s hat off, and is immediately dismissed. Seemingly thinking “to hell with it!” Bob goes on a festive splurge, buying various Christmas goodies, including a goose for the family dinner that seems a pretty reasonable size, and rather undermines one of the most famous moments of the story later on.
As for Scrooge, his evening is much as usual except that he interrupts Marley’s visit to call the watch, who come into his house only to find, of course, nothing there. Jacob resumes his lecture, and sends Ebenezer to bed with his usual warning.
Past:
No androgynous spirit for this version – Past is very definitely female here, and saddled with a rather ridiculous-looking hat with a star on the top as well, as if she’s some sort of walking Christmas tree decoration.
There’s an interesting little touch of Dick Wilkins being a schoolboy friend of Scrooge’s before they are apprenticed together at Fezziwig’s. There’s also a nice invented scene of Scrooge claiming to another schoolfriend, Jack, that he’s glad to be staying at school for the festive season, and that the extra “swotting” (not sure that’s of the era!) will be good for him, when he’s clearly putting on a front and doesn’t really believe that.
When we’re onto Fezziwig’s, it’s a bit of skimping on the scale. There’s no party, just old Fezziwig giving Ebenezer and Dick a gold sovereign each, and telling them to join him and his family for Christmas Dinner tomorrow.
The Spirit then brings things to a close with a sort of precis of things we’re not shown – saying she hasn’t yet shown him his “black years” and his “gradual enslavement to greed.” But that’s all we get that hints at the Belle scene – there is no sign of her, and Scrooge extinguishes the Spirit before she can expand on these edited highlights.
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| Not exactly the most androgynous Ghost of Christmas Past ever seen on film... |
Very much the traditional Spirit here, and quite well-played by Lionel Braham. This sequence touches on some aspect of the book not always carried over to adaptations – the Spirit’s spreading of Christmas cheer to those he and Scrooge pass by, and the fact that the Cratchits and those like them would have taken their Christmas meat to be cooked at the local bakery rather than having an oven in which to cook it themselves.
We then shift to a new scene, which if you’re being charitable you can say is hinted at in the original, of a church service. I say hinted at as Bob mentions being at one, it’s where he’s been with Tim, and we see them in church – at the very same service at Nephew Fred and his fiancée. That’s right, fiancée; he’s not married in this version, being too poor to afford to get married, which becomes relevant later.
It’s almost as if the filmmakers have given up here, lazily sitting around while the congregation gets deep into verses of O Come all Ye Faithful that your average person in the street wouldn’t recognise. Bess, Fred’s fiancée, doesn’t even attempt an English accent, and there’s a bit of ‘comedy’ business with an ice-sliding vicar which you’ll see coming a mile off.
We then spend a lot of time with the Cratchits and their frankly perfectly good Christmas goose, before Mrs Cratchit, and not Bob, proposes the toast to Scrooge, and Ghost of Christmas Present (or rather, scriptwriter Butler) manages to mess up the “surplus population” line by omitting the surplus.
Scrooge seems fully done by this point, declaring that he loves Christmas, and even though the film is not even an hour old they still feel the need to stick in a sort of recap of Scrooge’s visions so far, just to hammer home the point.
No Ignorance and Want, of course.
Yet to Come:
A traditional depiction of the third Spirit, on the whole, although he comes marching in like a monk on a mission, rather than sort of drifting with his stride invisible under his robe as he does in many other versions. His hand and arm, when raising to point or gesture, are also visibly human here, rather than either kept hidden by the arm of his robe or given a more skeletal appearance, as is often the case.
We see the vision of Scrooge’s death being discussed by his fellow businessmen, but none of the Old Joe section.
What’s To-Day:
When Scrooge sends for the goose, which he then takes to the Cratchits’ house in person, the bird is oddly no bigger than the one Bob had already purchased for the family the day before, which rather undermines the whole thing. As does the fact that it’s been established in the film they can’t cook the thing at their own home anyway.
As seems to be a depressingly common theme in many adaptations of the tale, they decide here to have Scrooge solve all of Fred’s problems with money, in this case making him a partner in Scrooge & Marley so that he can now afford to marry his fiancée. Once again, I can’t help but feel as if they’re rather missing the point.
An interesting note for fans of the 1970 musical version starring Albert Finney is that the present Scrooge gives to Tim here is a toy carousel. The same gift is given in the musical; possibly a coincidence, but perhaps a deliberate nod to this version, or maybe even an unconscious influence.
Review:
This is, in some ways, an odd version of the story. Given its compact length of 69 minutes, quite a bit is cut – which is perhaps understandable. But what’s less understandable is why, having done that, they then choose to squander so much time on scenes of their own creation, particularly all the business with Fred at the beginning, or on sections such as the Cratchits’ Christmas, which while important seem to unduly dominate the running time.
It must be said, however, that the production standards are very good for the era, with several large and detailed sets – Scrooge’s chambers being particularly good in this regard, if perhaps a touch overlit – and even a rare luxury for Carol adaptations up to this point, actual outdoor scenes. They may only be on backlots, but they do add an extra, expanded quality sometimes lacking in the smaller sets of previous versions.
The modelwork and effects are also good, with Marley’s ghost being excellently-executed, and the sweeping vistas flown over by Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past also very effective, if somewhat unintentionally evocative of Superman carrying Lois Lane as he flies for a modern viewer!
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| "Is it a bird? Is it a plane...?" |
In a nutshell:
This is sadly another example of taking a great story and somehow managing to suck most of the charm from it. Well-produced, but poorly-written and with uneven performances. Missable.
Links:
Wikipedia
IMDb
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