Title:
Scrooge
Format:
Black-and-white feature film
Country:
UK
Production
company:
Twickenham Film Studios
Year:
1935
Length:
77 minutes
Setting:
Victorian – specifically, a caption near the start tells
us it’s December 1843, so it’s set exactly when the book was first released.
Background:
Probably forgotten by anyone other than the most ardent
students of the topsy-turvy fortunes of the British film industry in the 1930s,
Scrooge is nonetheless an important
milestone in the story of the Carol’s
many adaptations. It was the first feature-length sound version, and was
probably the highest-profile British adaptation until its later namesake – upon
which this seems to have been something of an influence – was released in 1951.
Twickenham Film Studios were not one of the major players
of British cinema of the 1930s, and had previously been best-known for churning
out “quota quickies”, the cheap and cheerful films made purely to meet
government requirements for home-grown production. Scrooge was one of their efforts to break into full-blown
film-making, with an eye for the US market. Masterminded by producer Julius Hagen, Twickenham went bust a couple of years after Scrooge was released – something of an occupational hazard for
British film companies at the time.
Cast and crew:
Seymour Hicks stars as Scrooge, but it was far from being
the first time he’d taken the role. In his sixties by this point, he’d been a
star of the stage since the Victorian era, appearing in many comedies and
musicals. He’d taken the part of Ebenezer on stage many times, and previously
appeared in a silent movie version in 1913, also called Scrooge.
Outside of Hicks, probably the best-known actor is
Maurice Evans, who later moved to work in Hollywood and played Dr Zaius in the
first two Planet of the Apes films.
He has only a small role here, as a man suffering Scrooge’s demands to pay the
debt he owes in the Christmas Past section.
H. Fowler Mear wrote the screenplay – he seems to have
been a regular scriptwriter for Twickenham, although didn’t pick up a huge
amount of work after they went out of business. Director Henry Edwards had also
been an actor, and another regular at Twickenham. His directorial career also
doesn’t seem to have survived the company’s demise, but he did continue acting,
and played a small role in David Lean’s Oliver
Twist in 1948.
Underdone Potato:
Given the comparatively short running time when compared
to other feature-length film and television versions, Scrooge seems to spend an inordinate amount of time fannying around
before it actually gets to the ghosts. In the book there’s a tiny mention in
the prose of the Lord Mayor’s Christmas preparations at the Mansion House –
here we see them, and the meal being had, for no good reason at all, in
sequences which simply serve to hold up proceedings.
There are some nice uses of details in the prose being
fed into scenes and dialogue here, however – we see Bob having a go at sliding
on the ice after he’s finished work, as seen in some other versions but not
necessarily all; and a blind man’s dog being nervous of Scrooge, as again
spoken of in the text by Dickens.
There are also some other bits invented purely for this
version – when the two charity men call on Scrooge, they first say they’d tried
him at home, assuming he would have been done by now on Christmas Eve, which I
suppose does give some extra indication of Scrooge’s attitude.
Marley’s Ghost itself does not appear – literally. As he
enters, Marley helpfully explains that only Scrooge can see him, and this
applies to us in the audience as well as anybody else who may have come into
the scene at that point. It’s clear Scrooge can see him, as he asks about the
chains and so forth, but he’s never shown to us aside from the traditional
earlier glimpse of his face on the knocker as Scrooge first returns to his
chambers.
There’s also a change as Marley delivers spoilers for the
story to Scrooge – rather than saying he’ll be visited by three spirits, he
specifically explains that they will be the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present
and Yet to Come.
 |
| "What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough..." |
Past:
We don’t really see the Spirit here, either – it’s a
shapeless, formless light, with a man’s voice. When it leaves, we do at least
see Scrooge snuffing out the candle by his bed to indicate his shooing away of
the ghost, which does preserve something of the original intention.
There’s very little of Scrooge’s past seen here – in fact,
only really one scene. We witness him cruelly demanding a young couple pay up
their debt, which they are unable to do. Unseen by Scrooge, Belle has entered
the office and overhears the conversation, and is disgusted by his hard-hearted
attitude. There then follows the usual business when she breaks their
engagement.
It’s all played very
melodramatically, but it is an interesting touch to have Belle directly witness
Scrooge becoming the miser we know at the start of the story. However, having
Hicks also playing the “younger” Scrooge stretches credulity just a tad!
So no school, and no Fezziwig, but already after this one
instance Scrooge already seems to be a changed man, to such an extent that it
almost seems as if the remaining two visits are a mere formality.
Present:
The Spirit is depicted as his usual jolly self, although
unusually in this instance he is sans
beard – the only one of the Ghosts we properly see as an actual being in the
whole film.
This sequence also makes up for the somewhat
stripped-down nature of the Christmas Past section by including a lot of
material from the book which we don’t often see in other adaptations – so at
the Cratchits we get the whole business with Mrs Cratchit being worried about
the status of her Christmas Pudding, and very rare indeed for any adaptation we
see a little acknowledgement of the fact that the Cratchits would not have had
the facility to cook their own goose at home, and it would have been done
instead at a local baker’s – there’s a throwaway moment where someone comes to
deliver it for them, but it adds a nice bit of authenticity.
We then get the brief visits to the lighthouse and the
ship which are almost always skipped over on most occasions, before we arrive
back in London at Fred’s house, with a rather jolly and busy-looking party
going on. As soon as they’ve played the game where Fred turns out to be thinking
of Uncle Scrooge, however, the section ends – with no sign of the Spirit having
aged, and no Ignorance and Want.
Yet to Come:
The Spirit is never seen in full, merely as the shadow of
a pointing hand, showing Scrooge towards the various things he needs to see. We
see the businessmen talking of his death, and Mrs Dilber, the laundress and the
undertaker’s man all meeting at Old Joe’s all represented fairly faithfully. We
also see the mourning Cratchits, and even get a glimpse of poor old dead Tiny
Tim laid out on the bed awaiting his funeral.
There’s quite a nice shot at the end of this sequence,
where Scrooge is pleading at his future grave. The Spirit’s hand, seen in
shadow through the whole section simply pointing, is joined in shadow by
another hand, Scrooge’s, as he grasps imploringly at it, as it tries to pull
away.
What’s To-Day:
When Scrooge wakes up a changed man, Mrs Dilber walks in
to bring his hot water for shaving and is disconcerted by the change in him,
something which isn’t in the book and is therefore difficult not to think of as
having been a direct influence on the very similar scene in the 1951 version.
This may be the only adaptation of the story, ever, in
which the boy in the street replies to Scrooge’s request to go and purchase the
prize Turkey with his dismissive “Walk-er!”
of the book – whether this was still an expression with some currency or not in
the 1930s, I’m not sure. (Edit - it turns out I was wrong about this being the only adaptation to do it!)
Sadly, there’s then some further unnecessary messing-about,
as the boy can’t raise the butcher, so comes back to Scrooge’s and they go
round there together to try and wake him up. Scrooge going to dinner at Fred’s
is quite touchingly done, however, and there’s a nice adherence to the original
book when Scrooge sees Bob in the office the next morning, as Bob is so shaken
by his employer’s strange turn that he picks up the poker with which to defend
himself.
There’s no closing narration from anybody, but Scrooge
does deliver some of the book’s closing passage himself. He tells Bob that he
will become “a second father” to Tiny
Tim (rather arrogantly, I thought), and unusually it’s Scrooge himself who gets
to deliver the final “God bless us, every
one!”
 |
| It doesn't come across as well in a single still frame, but this model shot is very impressive for the time. |
Review:
It’s interesting to think that this film was closer to
Dickens than we are to this film – 80 years since it was released as I write
this, and when it was made it had been 65 years since Dickens’s death. It’s
perfectly possible, perhaps even probable, that at the time this film came out
there were still people alive who had met and spoken with Dickens when they
were young.
While certainly not among the first rank of adaptations
of the Carol – or really, if we’re
being honest, even the second – this is nonetheless better than I had expected it
to be. Some of the teeth of the story have been pulled, but as I’ve mentioned
there are also plenty of moments from the book which don’t often crop up when
the story makes it to the screen.
It does, however, suffer from what it leaves out,
especially in the Christmas Past section which is left looking decidedly
sparse. Scrooge’s change also comes about too rapidly and perhaps too easily –
the final two Spirits could easily have been given the night off if you go by
the version of events related here.
It’s generally very well-played, though, and while he
perhaps doesn’t entirely work as the jovial, post-hauntings Scrooge, Hicks does
a good job of making him unpleasant and unlikeable early on. He and Donald Calthrop as Bob Cratchit certainly make for a very striking pair visually –
Hicks looks like something out of Dr Seuss here, while Calthrop could at times
almost be a Stan Laurel impersonator.
Production-wise, there are some very nice touches –
Marley’s face in the knocker is well-done, but probably the best shot in the
whole thing is the very impressive pan across a model of Victorian London seen
during the Christmas Present sequence, with many streets of houses and the dome
of St Paul’s in the background. You even see someone moving in an upstairs
window in the foreground before the shot pulls back to show all the streets and
houses beyond – quite sophisticated stuff for the time.
I’m certain this film must have been an influence on the
makers of the better-known 1951 British film starring Alastair Sim, too – not simply
from having the same title, but picking up on and expanding this version’s
sequences of Scrooge having his “melancholy
dinner in his usual melancholy tavern,” and the business with Mrs Dilber
near the end.
In a nutshell:
Certainly worth watching if you’re someone who’s curious
about seeing various different adaptations of the story, but I wouldn’t
recommend seeking it out if you’re looking for one of the very best versions.
Another interesting credit, to follow on from Stannah
Stairlifts in the 2000 ITV version – here we get “Coiffure – Charles.” That’s it, no surname!
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