Tuesday, 19 December 2023

A Christmas Carol - 2020, film


Title:
A Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Live action feature film
 
Country:
UK
 
Production company:
Frith Street Films
 
Year:
2020
 
Length:
96 minutes
 
Setting:
Fantasy Victorian
 
Background:
This is, I feel reasonably certain of saying, a unique version of the Carol. There is a framing set-up at the start and end which is conventionally acted and performed, of some children putting on a kind of puppet show version of the Carol with cut-out paper figures from newspapers and illustrations, for an audience of presumably their mother and father and a younger sibling. An older woman, perhaps their grandmother, narrates.
 
But the main action of the story and the majority of the film takes place ‘within’ their model theatre stage. Live-action performances among dioramas of cut-out newspaper clippings and Leech-like illustrations and cardboard walls. And these live-action performers do not speak any words – they glide and move but all the vocal performances are given by others, mixed with the narration. The whole effect is rather like watching a narrated ballet with voiceovers for the different characters, or visuals put to a radio play.

 
This did, apparently, get a cinema release in the UK for Christmas 2020, and I think I do remember toying with the idea of going to see it. But cinemas were of course struggling in the pandemic at the time, with big releases having been pushed back to 2021, social distancing in place and not many people yet keen to get fully back into the swing of going out and gathering together. So I doubt this did much business or was seen by a huge number of people on its original release.
 
Cast and crew:
Each of the characters, outside of the framing set-up, has two performers – a dancer and a voice artist. So, for example, Scrooge is seen being performed on-screen as a dancer by Michael Nunn, but all of his dialogue is delivered by Simon Russell Beale, as Nunn’s lips never move to it, nor do any of the other characters to their voice actors – this is not a mime show.
 
The voice cast is, I think, much better known than the dancing one. Beale is one of those actors distinguished in the profession – knighted, even – with a wide and respected body of work but not really a household name as such; more of a kind of ‘oh, him!’ type when you see him in things. I recall him mostly as Widmerpool in the Channel 4 version of A Dance to the Music of Time, for which he won a BAFTA.
 
Elsewhere, Bob Cratchit is voiced by Martin Freeman, known of course for his TV roles as Tim in the original BBC version of The Office and Watson in Sherlock, and on the big screen for his starring role in the Peter Jackson Hobbit films. Oscar-winner Daniel Kaluuya voices the Ghost of Christmas Present, while two-time Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan gets quite a high billing for quite a small part as Belle. Andy Serkis, a year on from his appearance in the 2019 television version, gets a credit on a more traditional telling here, this time in the role of the voice of Marley. The biggest name actually appearing on screen is Siân Phillips, as the narrating grandmother figure in the wraparound sequences, and in voiceover form throughout.


The film is directed by Northampton-born brother-and-sister team Jacqui and David Morris, with David providing the screenplay. They began their filmmaking career on documentaries, being BAFTA nominated for their production about war photographer Don McCullin. Together they run Frith Street Films, which was the production company for this version of the Carol.
 
Underdone Potato:
Having Phillips as the narrator means that, much like Gonzo in the Muppet version, we get to keep much of Dickens’ prose from the book which would otherwise have been lost in a more conventional screen adaptation, so that’s a good move. However, there is one change near the very start which gives me pause. The underlining that it must be understood that Marley is dead at the start “…or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate,” is here changed to “nothing good,” which I’d suggest is a rather different thing.
 
It's an interesting change because it seems to me to switch the meaning of the line from being that you have to understand Marley is dead or else the story itself will not have its wondrous magic, to meaning you cannot take the good and decent message of the story unless you understand that. It is, as I say, an interesting thing to do and I wish I could ask David Morris why he’d decided to make that particular change.

 
Marley is quite a sinister figure here, so much so that there’s even a bit of a coded warning about this at the start, with the mother warning her youngest child that Marley will be the frightening one, but will be soon gone. One of his lines which is often left out, the explicitly Christian reference to the Wise Men following a star, is included here – and overall this version does retain more of Dickens’ specific references to Christianity than is usually the case in other adaptations of what’s become the great secular Christmas tale.
 
There are some minor changes, such as Scrooge meeting the two charitable gentlemen out on the street rather than in his office, but on the whole, as with the rest of the film, this section proceeds fairly faithfully to the book.
 
Past:
The spirit is female on this occasion, and seems to lack any of the candle imagery specified by Dickens – although I suppose you could say that her dance performance is perhaps intended to evoke the flickering of a flame. It’s fairly subtle though, if so, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course.
 
The school scene contains one of the few of this versions own inventions, a man called “Honest Tom” who is seen to comfort the young Scrooge during one of his lonely childhood Christmases. We get Fan bringing him home, and then later an extra Fan scene between the Fezziwig party and the Belle scenes – Fan dying in childbirth with Fred, which I suppose could perhaps be taken as implied in the book but isn’t explicit.


As in many other versions Belle is present at the Fezziwigs’ party, which she isn’t in the book, and we see Scrooge propose to her there. After the late scene of her breaking their engagement, here we do get the second Belle scene from the Christmas of Marley’s death, which any adaptation always gets an extra mark from me for including as I have always liked it. However, they don’t do the entire scene – we see her husband return home, but there’s none of their discussion of Scrooge and Marley which takes place in the book.
 
With the spirit lacking that candle imagery, here Scrooge does not snuff her out at the end of the section.
  
Present:
Most of the usual main elements are all present and correct here, but as in other places they also include some things which other adaptations often omit. So we have Scrooge’s confrontation with the spirit over the pressure to close bakeries on Sundays, and a little of their trip out to sea – although no miners.
 

Just before the end of the section, there is another of the inventions unique to this version, as we see examples of violence, aggression and prostitution on the streets of Victorian London. These are seemingly there to underline the issues of Ignorance and Want, as unveiled from beneath the spirit’s cloak as in the original.
 
Yet-to-Come:
The spirit has something of its usual hooded shape, but taking a cue from Dickens’s description of it “coming like a mist along the ground,” it’s depicted here not so much as a person as a kind of black cloud with a single hand emerging from it to point and gesture as-and-when required.


What’s To-Day:
Again, very faithful to the book – although there is one oddity which I don’t quite understand. When Scrooge asks the boy below his window to go and buy the prize bird from the poulterers’ for him, Dickens has the boy reply with a disbelieving “Walk-er!” This no longer being a common expression it’s not usually included in adaptations, although it is sometimes by those who like the period flavour it gives or just want to try and be as authentic to the text as they can.
 
Here the boy replies… “Walk-RE”. Which I don’t understand. It almost makes me wonder… Was it a typing error? A transposing of the last two letters of the response which somehow made it all the way through scripting, redrafting, recording, editing and dubbing…? It couldn’t be… Could it…?


Review:
It’s hard not to imagine a lot of the people who might actually have ventured to the cinema to see this turning to someone who’d come to it with them a little way in and asking, in trepidation, “Is it… like this all the way through?”
 
Sadly, yes it is. I didn’t hate this version by any stretch of the imagination, and I think that the design and concept of the staging of it, the whole idea of the characters being cut-outs within the dollhouse theatre setting, is lovely. And having Phillips as narrator to give us some of that wonderful Dickens prose is always something which I’d welcome.
 
But I suspect you’d probably get a lot more out of this version of you’re interested in interpretive dance – which I am not. I think you need words to tell a story, and while of course narration and dialogue are both present here, I find the way they’re detached from the characters on screen gives a distancing effect to the whole thing.

In a nutshell:
There are far worse versions, and it is an interesting experiment. It looks lovely – but I find it hard to believe it could ever be anybody’s favourite version of the Carol.

Links:

Thursday, 22 December 2022

Scrooge, or A Christmas Carol (Sarah) - 1990, television

 

Title:
Scrooge, or A Christmas Carol Sarah 

Format:
Multi-camera studio VT children’s comedy
 
Country:
UK
 
Production company:
BBC Television
 
Year:
1990 – transmitted on BBC One on December 29 that year
 
Length:
41 minutes
 
Setting:
Contemporary
 
Background:
Going Live! was the BBC’s live Saturday morning children’s television programme from 1987 to 1993, one of the best-known shows from a tradition of such live sequence programmes which were a fixture of weekend children’s viewing in the UK from the mid-1970s until into the 2000s. Both the BBC and ITV developed strong contributions to the genre down the decades, although they rarely if ever both had strong, popular shows of this type at the same time – perhaps inevitably, it would swing back-and-forth between the two as to who had the most successful format at any given point.
 
That said, the formats were broadly similar – the shows would be studio-based, led by a duo or perhaps a team of presenters, with live guests including various young pop stars and actors of the day. There’d often be an audience full of children in the studio, regular items, games, interviews, and episodes of cartoon series interspersed throughout. The best-known examples of these shows would become well-known pop culture touchstones, and part of the childhood television memories of a generation.
 
Going Live! is certainly one of those best-known examples, and by 1990 was probably at the height of its powers. Being from the Saturday between Christmas and New Year this particular example was not, in fact, a live show, but a pre-recorded version retitled Gone Live! and consisting of the regular teaming linking between the usual cartoons and other items without the audience or guests. The final 40 minutes was then all built around this adaptation of A Christmas Carol, using the Going Live! team as the stars of the story. 


Cast and crew:
The presenters of Going Live!, Sarah Greene and Philip Schofield, had already become well-known on children’s television through the 1980s through presenting Blue Peter and the Children’s BBC ‘broom cupboard’ weekday afternoon strand respectively. They take on the main Scrooge and ‘Scratchit’ roles here, with Greene probably getting the Scrooge part – Sarah Scrooge – because of her greater actual acting experience, having previously appeared in the likes of Doctor Who. Schofield clearly did also have at least some acting ambitions himself, as not long after this he took over the lead in Jason and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat in the West End, but Greene was clearly the stronger and more confident actor. As a six-year-old at this time, I labour under the misunderstanding that Schofield’s name was “Philips Gofield.”
 
Also a well-known element of Going Live! were the comedy duo Trevor and Simon, Trevor Neal and Simon Hickson, who had been brought onto the programme to give a child-friendly version of the kind of alternative comedy of the Young Ones and Blackadder generation which had become popular through the 1980s. Trevor and Simon’s material, however, still had plenty to engage and amuse across the generations, and they appear in multiple roles here – framing the story as their regular ‘World of the Strange’ paranormal storyteller characters, and also popping up in their ‘Swing Your Pants’ folk singer guises.
 
Most importantly, however, Hickson and Neal actually wrote the whole thing, too. Peter Leslie was the director and David Mercer the producer, with the special being recorded across two days earlier in the month, on the 4th and 5th of December.


Underdone Potato:
The ‘World of the Strange’ wraparounds take place in a timeless, cod-Victorian misty street setting, but the actual main action of the story is very firmly of its time. Sarah Scrooge runs a typically yuppy-looking, late-Thatcherite hard-nosed big business empire, with big shoulders, big cordless phones, big green-and-black computer displays and Stock-Aitken-Waterman second-ranker Sonia, exactly the type of person you would expect to turn up as a guest on Going Live!, as one of the charity collectors. The other charity collector is Peter Simon, who presented Going Live!’s game show segment, Double Dare.
 
Schofield is poor Philip Scratchit, office underling, who we see in a scene from home is ‘married’ here to the Going Live! cookery slot presenter, and future co-presenter of the show’s Saturday successor Live & Kicking, Emma Forbes. Their offspring is of course Schofield’s sidekick from throughout his children’s television presenting days, the puppet Gordon the Gopher, here rechristened ‘Tiny Gordon’ for the occasion. Oddly, despite the workplace setting being contemporary, the Scratchits’ home is a very 1950s-type set-up.

 
Scratchit is invited round Sarah’s trendy early 90s flat for Christmas Eve, but this turns out to be a trick so she can frame him for being arrested for stealing her hi-fi system – another very of-its-period prop. Sarah is then visited by the ghost of her former business partner Jacob Marley, who is played by Rowland Rivron. Rivron is one of those performers who most of the audience might recognise as being someone they have seen in something, but would be unable to place or name without a bit of help, who has nonetheless spent many years since the 1980s cropping up in a range of British musical and comedy – and sometimes both – TV shows.
 
The Marley played by Rivron is something of a departure – no chains, instead the hell of constantly having to keep a white suit clean, which isn’t a bad substitute gag. The thing is, though, it’s made clear he’s not actually being punished – he was a nice person who enjoyed Christmas, and it’s Scrooge who’s the only bad one. He also gets a gag about being off to Elvis Presley’s Wild Sherry Party, which reminded me that for years and years, through all my growing up certainly, Elvis was pretty much the most famously dead person whose being dead could be safely joked about without fear of offending or upsetting anybody. Is there a modern day equivalent of this, I wonder…?

 
Past:
Smashing through a wall in Sarah Scrooge’s apartment much like Robbie Coltrane as the ‘Spirit of Christmas’ in another BBC spoof version of a couple of years beforehand, it’s Red Dwarf computer face Norman Lovett as a Hell’s Angel-type spirit wearing a winged motorcycle helmet left over from an old Doctor Who story. I quite liked this, as it placed it very much within the BBC of my youth, where all the shows the BBC made and had ever made all seemed to exist together within Television Centre.
 
Anyway, the Spirit shows Sarah some of the action from the office at Christmas time a few years beforehand, and there’s an implication that she might have killed Marley by kicking him out of a window. She insists she didn’t, but it’s not clear how much we’re meant to believe her – and as the Spirit points out, who would anyway, with her reputation? We also see her declining the offer of a mince pie from Marley on the basis that she’s a vegetarian – a nice little reference to the pies’ real origins. Or juts one of the man fun, throwaway gags in the piece, one or the other!

 
Present:
Much like Rivron, the actor cast as the Ghost of Christmas Present here is someone many in the audience will know by sight but then get frustrated they can’t remember who it is. It’s Susie Blake, who certainly at this point would have been familiar to many for her work with Victoria Wood, most notably as her blunt in-vision continuity announcer.
 
There’s a nice gag which it’s surprising hasn’t been done more about the Ghost of Christmas Present literally being the ghost of a Christmas present – complete with box-on-legs type costume. The whole thing is filled with corny gags of this type, but it knows they’re corny and isn’t earnestly trying to sell them to you. The whole thing is a send-up of itself, a knowing nod-and-a-wink to the audience as their Saturday morning favourites mess around, which is exactly the kind of thing that A Christmas Carol being so familiar a trope allows you to do. This being the time period that it is, there’s also a gag an the expense of Channel 4’s famous 1982 animation The Snowman and its “Walking in the Air” song, both very much as strong a part of the secular British Christmas as the Carol at this point.
 
The Spirit takes Sarah Scrooge to see the Scratchits being very poor indeed, and there’s an interesting bit at the end of this section where Scrooge has left the scene upset, and the Spirit then turns to the family and congratulates them on their performance – so in this version, they’re in on it with the Spirits.


Yet to Come:
The Spirit initially appears in its traditional guise, but is eventually unmasked, or unhooded, as… rapper and television presenter Normski, for no apparent reason other than yes, he is also exactly the sort of person who might have turned up on Going Live! at this point.
 
We tick forward a decade to the year 2000, where we see Sarah’s desk at work being cleared away, although it isn’t entirely clear what’s supposed to have happened to her. Of course the set hasn’t been changed at all from the 1990 version, so it’s still filled with those green-and-black displays which would have been long gone by the real 2000 – it would have been Windows machines by then. Not that anybody making this would have known or cared about that, but it was an interesting reminder of just how quickly some things really did change over those ten years, as the internet era arrived.


What’s To-Day:
Sarah and Normski agree to skip a couple of pages of unnecessary dialogue, so they can get to the big party scene at the end. Sarah does get to have a chat with a boy at her window, and arranges for a nut roast to be sent to the vegetarian Scratchits. We then have the big party at her place, which is an excuse for the show’s second interminable musical number, and a whole bunch of cameos from various musical, acting and presenting names of the time – Kim Wilde, Rosemarie Ford, Annabel Giles and Andi Peters are among those present. At the finale Sarah, having signed over all her money to Scratchit, asks to borrow the taxi fare she needs – and we see his eyes go devil red, as it’s suggested he is perhaps now the miner… or miser, sorry, to repeat one of the show’s own gags!

 
Review:
I don’t remember watching this at the time, although I can’t help but feel that I must have done, as I was every inch the Going Live! viewer, and I know for certain that I did see one of the preceding shows that morning, the final episode of Breakfast Serials. I wish I did remember more about it from the time, as I would probably have got more of the gags and references to people and things from Going Live! which time has wiped away from my memory – well it has been 32 years now, after all!
 
It does what it does very well, though – takes those presenters and characters and references and running jokes with which the intended audience will already be well-versed, and uses the familiar tale of the Carol as a framework upon which to hang them. And remember, they didn’t have to do this. For a pre-recorded programme on the weekend between Christmas and New Year, they could simply have shot a few links joining together a load of cartoons and ‘best of’ bits. The fact that they took the time, effort and trouble to mount a full-on 40-minute production of the Carol, as cheap and cheerful as it doubtless was comparatively-speaking, is to be applauded.
 
I love the whole world in which this is set – not just that Saturday morning, Sarah and Phil and Trevor and Simon world of my young childhood, but also the world of BBC Television Centre and the types of stars who could have been wandering the corridors there to be roped into this, and of the time and place. When Sarah smashes her square clock-radio-alarm thing and then gives herself a new one for Christmas, I’m watching it thinking ‘I had one like that!’ It’s of its era, no question, but for someone who was a child at the time that only makes it all the more appealing.
 
The one thing I could have done without were the two musical numbers, from acts way down the 1990 cast list – Twenty 4 Seven and Hothouse Flowers. They just seem to bring the whole thing grinding to a halt, and you’d much rather have Trevor and Simon back on the screen doing something amusing. Or just some more of the running joke about Sarah being unable to remember it’s “Bah humbug!”, so we get hobnobs, hotpants and more!
 

In a nutshell:
If you grew up watching Saturday morning BBC Television in the late 1980s or early 90s, you’ll very probably enjoy this – but anybody else may just be left a tad confused!
 
Links:
IMDb

Monday, 13 December 2021

A Christmas Carol - 1970, television


Title:
A Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Illustrated reading
 
Country:
UK
 
Production company:
Anglia Television, for the ITV network
 
Year:
1970 – shown at various points by several different ITV regional companies that Christmas season
 
Length:
48 minutes
 
Setting:
Victorian
 
Background:

Anglia Television, based in the city of Norwich, were the East of England regional contractors for the ITV network in the UK, going on-air in October 1959. Although they relied heavily on the network output produced by the larger ITV companies for much of their prime-time output, they were also a fully-fledged TV station and production company in their own right, producing a large number of programmes across a range of genres. They became something of a cultural institution in their region, particularly across much of Norfolk, the county where they were based.
 
They still exist, too, although these days pretty much just as the ‘ITV Anglia’ regional news service for the east. They are still based in their original Anglia House home, however, having disposed of many of its extensions and other buildings they occupied in Norwich down the years. Anglia House must surely be the last 1950s television studio still operating in the UK – the story goes that as a condition of the lease, they have to return it (the old Agricultural Hall) to the condition in which they found it should they leave, which is allegedly why ITV have surprisingly not yet downsized the operation.

 
Although many of Anglia’s programmes made during their glory years were purely designed to be shown in the eastern region on Anglia only, they also produced a number of wider-interest programmes screened on the network – they were particularly successful with their wildlife series Survival, their quiz show Sale of the Century and with a number of dramas down the years.
 
A Christmas Carol is another example of an Anglia programme which was clearly designed to have potential network appeal, with no particular regional ties. It’s an interesting affair; when I was kindly given a copy by James, a reader of this blog, he told me that it was animated, but that isn’t actually – bar one winking face and one moving clock hand – the case. It’s more of an illustrated reading, akin to a long episode of Jackanory in which you never see the narrator. It’s made up of an abridged version of the story, read over a series 150 or so still illustrations, with the cameras panning across and zooming into them at various points.
 
What I found especially interesting about this is that, although I’m no technical expert, it’s pretty clear that there wasn’t a rostrum camera or any film involved. The smooth pans and zooms, the occasional camera wobbles and the clean cross-fades all show that this was an entirely video production, with the artworks shot on studio video cameras and the production assembled on videotape.
 
The Transdiffusion TV history website has an article giving some of the background to this production, although it’s not clear where their information comes from. It seems that A Christmas Carol was one of a series of such productions made by the same team at Anglia in the late 1960s and early 70s, following on from a serialised adaptation of The Wind in the Willows and an original serial called The Winter of Enchantment, and followed by four further serials, including an adaptation of Treasure Island.

 
This doesn’t appear to have gained Anglia a network showing at Christmas 1970, but it seems as if it was broadcast by several of the different regional companies of the ITV network at some point or other over that festive season. Southern and Border both showed it on Christmas Eve, at 11.15am in Southern’s case and midday on Border; Anglia themselves put it out at 3.25 on Christmas Day in the afternoon; London Weekend Television at 9.20 on Boxing Day morning; Westward in two parts, at 10.40 on Boxing Day morning and 1pm on Sunday the 27th. There may have been others too, but those are the ones I could find in The Times’s Christmas TV listings.
 
Cast and crew:
There are just two people mainly responsible for the vast majority of the work on this version. One of them is Paul Honeyman, who produced it, wrote the abridged adaptation, and also performed it for good measure as well. And the other is John Worsley, the artist who produced all of the illustrations which make-up the visual part of the production.
 
Worsley had had a fascinating life; an official war artist during the Second World War, he was evidently the only one to be captured as a prisoner-of-war. He’d also work for famous comics such as the Eagle, and evidently his Carol illustrations for this production also saw release as a large-format children’s book version of the story.

"Come on mate, time to go..."
 
Honeyman was a staff producer for Anglia in Norwich, who had served in the army before joining Tyne Tees Television as an announcer. Moving to Anglia in 1968, he was initially a reporter for their About Anglia news programme, before moving up the ranks to become a producer and eventually Head of Features and later Assistant Programme Controller. Even through these promotions he continued to work on producing and narrating these children’s productions. He died in July 1978, at the age of just 41, shortly after finishing work on another of his children’s serial collaborations with Worsley, The Whisper of Glocken.
 
Aside from Honeyman, there are one or two sound effects used here and there, and also some other voices to give occasional background chatter or laughter. However, the other main presence is the music – by Peter Fenn, who was evidently Anglia’s Head of Music at the time. He employs the services of the Choir of Norwich Cathedral, to give the soundtrack an appropriately festive air.
 
Director John Salway had worked at Anglia for some years, including on the the previous Honeyman / Worsley children’s efforts. Like Honeyman, he also died young, in 1972 which production on their version of Treasure Island.
 
Underdone Potato:

In spite of the fact that this is an abridged version of the text to fit the running time, we get something here which you get hardly anywhere else – Dickens’s little preface about hoping the story will haunt the readers’ houses pleasantly, which is a nice touch.
 
Aside from that, though, while most of the best-known sequences are all present and correct, most of them have been quite heavily cut down in some way or other. Fred’s best dialogue, the “other creatures on other journeys” bit, is gone, and the two charitable gentlemen also pay little more than a flying visit.
 
The gravy pun is retained during Marley’s visit, however.

 
Early on, as we sweep across Worsley’s vision of Victorian London with the dome of St Paul’s dominating proceedings, there’s a pub sign for The Bell in the foreground – coincidence, or perhaps a deliberate reference to one of Norwich’s best-known watering holes…?

Past:

Worsley does a decent job of trying to render Dickens’s description of the Ghost of Christmas Past as both old and young at the same time, although there’s an odd effect given by the shadowing of its face early on which makes it look rather like it has some bushy black beard. It also looks as if it’s carrying a document folder, given how the cap its holding looks when we first see it, giving it a rather officious, middle-management-ghost sort of appearance.


The transition of Scrooge and the spirit being outside the school to inside the schoolroom is a nice effect that works well, although there’s no Fan at the end of the school sequence. Fezziwig, however, gains a first name in this version – Algernon – and in the break-up with Belle scene the young Scrooge gains some fairly extraordinary-looking yellow trousers.

"How can you possibly not want me, with my magnificent yellow trousers, Belle?"

Present:

While the Ghost of Christmas Past appeared oddly bearded on its first appearance, here Worsley goes against tradition and while depicting Christmas Present as the large, robed figure of Dickens, he has no beard in this version.


Another surprising inclusion, given all the tightening up elsewhere, is lingering on the Christmas fare for sale and retaining the mention of “Norfolk biffins” – which, for those like me who had to look it up, are a type of apple. Bless Anglia Television for flying the flag for their region and being possibly the only people in the history of Carol adaptations to keep that mention in. Indeed, so surprising was it that I actually had to check the original book to make sure it was there and not something Paul Honeyman had added in!

 
We get the educational point about the bakers cooking people’s Christmas lunches for them because they didn’t have their own ovens, but the only ‘main’ scene included is the visit to the Cratchits’ house. There’s no dropping-in on Fred and his house guests and party games in this one.
 
Yet to Come:

This is the most unfortunate section, and probably the reason – or at least one of the reasons – why this version isn’t better-known, and is unlikely to get another run-out on television today.
 
The reason being is that there’s a concentration on the Old Joe scene here, which is fair enough. But sadly, Old Joe himself is depicted as a very Fagin-like figure, in the worst possible sense; as every inch the offensive stereotype which Fagin has so often been played as being in the past.
 
While there are arguments to be had about Tiny Tim and the representation of the disabled, for a piece of literature written in 1843 by an author who had known prejudices, A Christmas Carol is pretty much free of such baldly offensive material, which makes it all the more disappointing that nearly 130 years later Paul Honeyman and Anglia Television saw fit to introduce it here.
 
The visit to the Cratchits is changed here, so that Bob isn’t coming back from visiting the site of Tim’s grave when he arrives home, but actually coming downstairs from his deathbed. To tell the family that Tim’s just died, which makes it seem a bit weird that they weren’t all up there with him.

Es are good, apparently...
 
There’s a common spelling error on Scrooge’s gravestone here, with Worsley adding an extra ‘e’ to label it ‘Ebeneezer Scrooge’.
 
What’s To-Day:
This is the only section which actually contains any of what you might call animation; firstly as Marley’s face on the knocker gets a reprise, giving a wink as it appears again, and secondly at the end when Scrooge watches the clock for Bob’s late arrival at work on Boxing Day, and we see the hand move through the minutes.


This is probably the section which departs most from the original; not massively, but there is a bizarrely, Disney-ish diversion when Scrooge laughs to himself at the change which has overcome him, as he does in the original. In this version, however, we see illustrated and are told about the birds on the windowsill outside being surprised to hear this noise from him, and they gather there to hear it.
 

We get the main sections, as per usual – meeting one of the charitable gentlemen, going to see Fred, and then playing his trick on Bob at the end.
 
Review:
When I first began watching this, I did wonder how well it would hold the attention. I’ve nothing against a reading of a book, but usually - unless it’s some sort of performance of the type Dickens himself used to give – you’re not also watching it at the same time. Honeyman’s reading would work equally well as an audio book without the illustrations, although it would fall down on not being a complete version.
 
The illustrations are nice, though, and director John Salway does a decent enough job of not just keeping them statically in frame the whole time, but keeping the cameras moving across and into them.


Worsley doesn’t try to ape John Leech’s original illustrations and has a style of his own, albeit one which feels very in-keeping with the Victorian setting. He’s also good at creating mood and atmosphere, with Marley and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come both being particularly effective in this regard.
 
Honeyman does well as narrator, too – I found a review in The Times from the time of the original transmission crediting him for not attempting to go over-the-top in acting it, but rather giving a good reading instead, and I think there is indeed a difference. It’s just a shame about the Old Joe sequence, which leaves a bitter taste in the mouth and means this can’t, in all good conscience, be recommended as a highlight in the Carol canon.
 
In a nutshell:
This isn’t a bad version by any means. It’s well-read, and the illustrations are nice – it’s just that there are better-read unabridged versions if that’s what you want, and more exciting versions visually, making it hard to think of a particular reason to recommend it.
 


 

Friday, 25 December 2020

Scrooge - 1951, film


Title:
Scrooge
 
Format:
Black-and-white feature film
 
Country:
United Kingdom
 
Production company:
George Minter Productions
 
Year:
1951
 
Length:
87 minutes
 
Setting:
Victorian
 
Background:
The first major British version of A Christmas Carol since 1935’s Scrooge, this version from sixteen years later appears to be influenced by the 1930s effort, and not simply through having the same title. There are particular sequences – not ones featured in the book – which seem to have been inspired by the 1935 version.
 
George Minter Productions, the company which made the film, and Renown Pictures, which distributed it, were both run by the eponymous Mr Minter himself, with Renown having been active since the 1930s. The year after Scrooge they followed up its success with another Dickens adaptation, The Pickwick Papers, scripted by Scrooge screenwriter Noel Langley and this time directed by him as well.


Cast and crew:
Director Brian Desmond Hurst was an Irishman, born in Belfast, and has been acclaimed as one of the most successful film directors to have come from that island. A veteran of the First World War, where he’d fought at Gallipoli, Hurst had moved to Hollywood in the 1920s where he’d learned the filmmaking craft from noted director John Ford. He moved back across the Atlantic to London in the early 1930s where he went on to work with Alexander Korda. He directed over twenty films, although Scrooge is probably the best-remembered of his work today.
 
Scriptwriter Noel Langley was a South Africa, although he later became a naturalised American citizen. He’d moved to the UK after graduating from university in the early 1930s, where he became a playwright and novelist, before making the move to Hollywood towards the end of the decade. There he was one of the co-writers of one of the most famous feature films ever made, The Wizard of Oz. After the Second World War he returned to working in Britain, where he wrote a series of screenplays for UK-made films, before later returning again to the USA.
 
Alastair Sim’s role as Scrooge is regarded as the definitive part of his career, and although he also had popular success elsewhere – such as in the St Trinian’s films – it’s by far and away the role for which he is best remembered, with some regarding him as the definitive screen interpretation of the part. Sim and his Marley, Michael Horden, would return to their roles for Richard Williams’s animated version of the tale in 1971, with Horden eventually earning a promotion to the Scrooge part himself when he starred in the 1977 BBC television version.

 
Other notable names in the cast list are those of the two actors who play the younger Scrooge and Marley – George Cole and Patrick Macnee, respectively. Both would go on to enjoy huge success later in their careers with popular television drama series; Cole as Arthur Daley in Minder and Macnee as John Steed in The Avengers. Cole was a protégé of Sim’s, and also appeared alongside him in the St Trinian’s films.
 
Kathleen Harrison and Jack Warner, who were well-known for co-starring in the Huggetts trilogy of films, appear as Mrs Dilber – in an expanded role for that character, so much so that Harrison gets second billing after Sim – and an original character called Mr Jorkin, who in this version is Scrooge’s employer after Fezziwig. Speaking of whom, future Carry On star Hattie Jacques is another familiar face putting in an appearance, here as Mrs Fezziwig.


Underdone Potato:
Fairly unusually, although by no means the only diversion this version will take into its own original territory, we begin with Scrooge not in his counting house, but at the exchange. Here he has a brief discussion with the two businessmen who will later be seen in the Yet-to-Come section, discussing his death.
 
We also see Scrooge dismissing someone who owes him money pleading to be allowed more time, and being dismissed with the assertion that it makes no difference what time of year it is, and the money would still be owed if it were a hot day in August.


When Scrooge finally does make it back into the office and we begin to pick up the start of the book, the order of Fred’s and the Charitable Gentlemen’s visits have been swapped around, and indeed the latter two are already waiting for him when he arrives. Which makes you wonder a bit about exactly what their conversation was with Cratchit when he admitted them and allowed them to wait, as they still enquire when Scrooge arrives whether they’re addressing him or Mr Marley.
 
They are dismissed in the usual manner, with the film running pretty close to the book for a while here, although when Fred turns up a lot of the dialogue is changed and the exchange is shortened. Particularly, Scrooge’s disapproval of Fred having got married is made a bit stronger, probably for reasons to do with things we’re going to see shortly in the Christmas Past section.

As this film seems to have been influenced by the 1935 version,
so it in turn would seem to have influenced the 1970 musical with
this bit of Tim peering into the toyshop window

There’s a rare showing of Scrooge having his meal in a tavern on his way home, and a new bit for the film gives a further demonstration of his miserliness when he calls for more bread, the waiter tells him it’s a halfpenny extra and he dismisses the man with a curt, “No more bread!” as if it were the waiter himself who had suggested it.
 
When Marley turns up, Horden’s performance is more on the sad and mournful side than the urgent and accusing tone which Jacob is often given, although I wouldn’t say that either decision was necessarily right or wrong. The Marley sequence stays very faithful to the book, even going so far as to include the lines about the toothpick which are hardly ever included in any other adaptations.
 
Past:
The Spirit doesn’t quite capture the strange, old-youngness of that described by Scrooge, nor its candle-like qualities, but overall it isn’t a bad attempt at trying to do a fairly faithful Ghost of Christmas Past, but more on the definitely older side.


Initially, this section stays faithful to the scenes as shown in the book, although with some changes and additions which particularly stand out. At the school, when Fan comes to collect Scrooge he tells her that she must live forever as she is the only person who has ever shown him any kindness, which rather seems to lay things on a bit thick with its attempting to foreshadow and make all the more impactful what is to come.
 
The ages of Scrooge and Fan have also been swapped around – we learn from an exchange between the older Scrooge and the Spirit as they watch that Scrooge’s mother died giving birth to him, just as Fan will evidently die giving birth to Fred, which is given as a reason why Scrooge’s father disliked him and why he disliked Fred.
 
We then go back to the book a bit more for the Fezziwigs’ part, at which as usual a version of the Belle character is present. I say ‘a version’ as she has been renamed Alice in this version, and from here we spear off into a lengthy sequence of original events not present in the book, although sometimes present and perhaps even copied in other adaptations.


Probably the most substantial new character created for this film is Jack Warner’s Mr Jorkin, who attempts to buy out Fezziwig, but the latter refuses. Jorkin is portrayed here as the face of then ‘modern’ industrial capitalism, interested only in making money and bringing in ‘machines’. Fezziwig is portrayed as the more paternalistic embodiment of an older era, who sees value in the past ways of doing things even if they may eventually drive him out of business.
 
Scrooge goes to work for Jorkin, who eventually does indeed get hold of Fezziwig’s business. It’s in Jorkin’s employee what Scrooge first meets Marley, and we see that the work together for many year before eventually taking over the company when it is found that Jorkin has embezzled the vast majority of the money from it. We also have a scene of Scrooge at his sister’s bedside as she lays dying, with him leaving the room – making clear his disgust at her husband and baby – too soon, so he doesn’t hear her ask him to look after Fred, which the older Scrooge now sees.
 
During all this, there’s a brief diversion back to the book where we get a version of the original Belle scene as Alice leaves Scrooge. Despite us then later going to the day Marley died, there’s no version of Belle’s other scene showing Alice happily married – although she does return again a little later in the film.

 
It’s in the section dealing with Marley’s death that we meet Mrs Dilber early in this version, made the charlady rather than the laundress here and hurrying to the offices of Scrooge & Marley to tell Scrooge that his partner is dying. Scrooge is unmoved and doesn’t go there until close of business – when Marley seems to be having a deathbed repentance for the way he has lived his life, although none of this means anything to Scrooge.
 
Present:
The Ghost of Christmas Present is shown as in the book, although he doesn’t age through the course of the sequence. There’s an interesting addition here where Scrooge already seems regretful, but despairingly tells the Spirit to go and redeem “some younger, more promising creature,” as he feels that it is already too late for him.

 
For a version which diverts so greatly from the book so often, it’s surprising that it also includes various original moments hardly ever present in other adaptations, and there’s another example of that here as we get a version of the visit to the miners. The Cratchit scene is also present reasonably faithfully as might be more expected, although Bob’s couple of references to “Martha, my dear” in the script here might put a certain section of the post-1960s audience more in mind of The Beatles than of Dickens.
 
The scene at Fred’s Christmas party is fairly short, not including any games so there’s no opportunity for Scrooge to join in with any of them. We also have an original sequence for this film showing what Alice is up to in the present, working with the poor – something which perhaps inspired the makers of the 2001 animated version to have their Belle doing the same.
 
Ignorance & Want are included, before Scrooge is left alone with the mocking, reproachful words of the Spirit ringing in his ears, waiting for his final ghostly visitor.
 
Yet to Come:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is as you’d expect, although with a human hand being the one emerging from its sleeve to point at what Scrooge needs to see. Once again, as he did with the previous ghost, Scrooge insists that he is too old, but he is led along on his journeys nonetheless.


There are three main visions presented to Scrooge here, all of them taken fairly faithfully from the book but interestingly presented in the reverse order of how they appear in the original. So we start with the Cratchits mourning Tim, before we then go on to a pretty much complete version of the Old Joe scene, complete with the undertaker present as well as Mrs Dilber and the laundress – although tweaked, as mentioned, as Mrs Dilber was the laundress in the original.
 
We then have the two businessmen Scrooge spoke to at the very start of the film discussing his death, before the Spirit takes Scrooge to the graveyard and shows him his grave.
 
What’s To-Day:
In a scene pretty clearly inspired by the 1935 version, when Scrooge awakes it’s with Mrs Dilber coming into his rooms, and being very confused and indeed alarmed by the change in him. It’s with her in this version that Scrooge has his “what’s to-day?” exchange, and I must admit that she and Harrison play the whole scene very well, with Mrs Dilber seemingly worried she’s going to be assaulted by the manic Scrooge.


The boy below the window is still present in slightly reduced form here, however, with Scrooge calling down at him to go and buy the turkey – with his authentic original reply of “Walk-er!” also included. This version doesn’t make the change others often do of Scrooge going to see the Cratchits, but we do have a scene of them receiving the turkey and wondering who sent it – with Tim suggesting that he feels it must have been Scrooge.
 
There’s a rather sweet little addition which I do like when Scrooge goes to see Fred. In the book, he paces up and down outside before eventually going to the front door, whereas in this version the hesitation comes after he’s already been admitted by the maid, lingering in the hallway, afraid to make his presence known. The maid – perfectly played by Theresa Derrington in one of only two small film parts she ever had – gives him an encouraging little nod to go in, which is such a tiny thing but one of the film’s nicest moments. It seems I’m not the only one who thinks so, either.

 
It all wraps up with a version of the closing narration, and a well-again Tim running up to his Uncle Scrooge.
 
Review:
I’ve been a little hesitant about including this film on the blog. I was always going to get around to it eventually, of course. My aim is to try and review as many different adaptations of the story as I possibly can, and it’s not as if this one is in any way awful.
 
It’s just that it’s a film I know a lot of people love and hold very dear, but one which I don’t think justifies that adoration. Perhaps it’s all to do with context. Had I seen this film as a child, knowing nothing about it, perhaps I would have enjoyed it far more than I did. But I didn’t actually see it until I was in my late twenties, when I was already a big fan of the Carol, had seen various versions I enjoyed very much, and knew that this had the reputation for being the definitive screen interpretation.
 
Well, I’m sorry to say that in my view I don’t think that’s the case.


Having heard for so long about what a faithful version it was, I was very surprised when I eventually saw it to see just how much it monkeys about with the story. Now, I know that some of you who’ve read my other reviews will say, “But you forgive that in The Muppets or the 1970 musical!” Which is true. But both of those have the defence of being heightened realities of puppetry or musical. And, frankly, both of them still stay closer to the book than Noel Langley does with his screenplay here.
 
I think some of the problem I have with Langley’s changes is a similar reaction to that I had to the 2019 television version – they just seem to make the whole thing more pointlessly miserable. Not that this film is anywhere near as bad as that particular adaptation, I hasten to add. The sections where it sticks to the book are indeed excellent – and Sim in particular is very good.
 
It’s not an awful film by any means whatsoever. It’s just that it does put in a lot of stuff which isn’t present or even hinted-at in the book, and the vast majority of it doesn’t really add anything in particular to the story. You have to credit them for attempting to do some new and different things with a story which was even by then over a century old and incredibly well-known, but
 
But for me, its reputation can’t help but lead to disappointment, especially when you compare it to the 1970, 1999 or Muppet versions. There’s a very fine cast here and there are some very good bits. However, I’m afraid that if you’re looking for a definitive screen version of the Carol – if such a thing is even possible – then this isn’t it. But it is amiable enough, and there are certainly far poorer versions to be had.


In a nutshell:
It doesn’t live up to its reputation. While there are some nice performances in it, there are better adaptations of the Carol out there.
 
Links:
Wikipedia
IMDb