Title:
A Christmas
Carol
Format:
Animated
television special
Country:
Australia
Production
company:
Burbank Films
Year:
1982
Length:
69 minutes
Setting:
Victorian England
Background:
This was an early
production from the Sydney-based Burbank Films – indeed, some sources list it
as their very first production, as they’d been founded the year this was made.
It was one of a series of Dickens adaptations the company made for the
Australian television channel the Nine Network, and coming after the 1969 version must make Australia perhaps the only country other than Britain or the
United States to have produced two animated versions of the tale. Or
indeed two or more versions full stop.
Sources vary on
when this was first broadcast on the Nine Network – both December 15th
and 22nd 1982 are quoted in different places online.
Cast and crew:
The star of the
1969 version, Ron Haddrick, returns to the role here, suggesting that he was
either perhaps particularly associated with the role in Australia, or the
makers couldn’t think of anybody else for the part. Other voices of note in the
cast include Robin Stewart, who’d played Syd James’s son in the UK sitcom Bless
This House before subsequently relocating to Australia, and Barbara Frawley, who had several animated credits to her name and would provide voices
in other Dickens adaptations for Burbank. Perhaps most notable of all among the
voice cast, however, is Anne Haddy – later to become famous as Helen Daniels in
Neighbours.
Alexander Buzo
was primarily a playwright whose works had at times created controversy; quite
a serious choice for a children’s adaptation of the Carol. Oddly, no
director is credited on-screen – Wikipedia gives the credit to Jean Tych, but
in the actual credits on the film she comes up under ‘character design’.
Perhaps there’s a story there to be looked into…
Underdone Potato:
There’s quite a
strange beginning to this one, wherein we see a child or young teenager – hard to
tell quite how old they’re supposed to be – stealing a loaf of bread from a
bakery because they’re hungry. They then bump into Scrooge, who presumably due
to some sort of extrasensory powers shakes them, the stolen bread falls out
from beneath their coat, and… Nothing. They run off, and Scrooge just sort of glowers
without doing anything. Presumably designed to show how desperate the young
person is, but as there’s no readily identifiable reaction from Scrooge either
to have them arrested or anything like that, it doesn’t really tell us much.
Things then proceed
much as usual, although with various differences to most versions. Instead of the
sections in Scrooge’s office all coming at once, Fred and the charitable
gentlemen visit in the morning, when an appreciable gap of time until the evening
when he asks Cratchit wanting the whole day off tomorrow. There are some extra
bits of business around Fred putting a wreath on the door – much to Scrooge’s
displeasure – and Cratchit coughing when the gentlemen suggest that Marley’s generosity
might be well represented in his surviving partner. When Bob does finally get
to leave the office, we get him sliding on the ice as in the book, but it’s not
a flat patch. Instead, it’s an ice slide which looks positively lethal.
Back at Scrooge’s
set of rooms, which do look suitably drab and dreary, it’s a handbell which starts
ringing rather than any bell on a pull, which is also something the 1959 television version did. Marley himself is less striking and more human-looking than his
counterpart in the 1969 Australian version, and indeed becomes very human-looking
indeed when we see a rare flashback to him in life. We also see Marley die –
seemingly quite out of his blue sitting at his desk.
Marley’s ghost
throws something of a hissy fit before he leaves, throwing a wooden chair onto
the fire. When he does go, after Scrooge follows to the window and we get the
bit not many versions do of the old miser seeing other spirits powerless to
help the living.
 |
| Careful Bob! That thing looks lethal! |
Past:
The Ghost of
Christmas Past is a barely-dressed young blond man, wearing some sort of Greek
toga-type micro dress. I bet he caught a chill going out and about with Scrooge
to these cold old Christmases! He’s also quite sharp and combative with Scrooge
verbally, with not much in the way of sympathy on display.
At the school scenes
we get another bit not often done, the discussion of Scrooge’s enthusiasm for
the childhood stories of his youth; Ali Barbar gets a mention, as in the book,
here appearing to Scrooge out of the window in his imagination. Fan comes to
get him as usual, and then we’re off to the Fezziwigs’ Christmas party, which
is a bit drab and uninspiring and sparsely-attended in this version – just Ebenezer,
Dick, the Fezziwigs and their two daughters, and the fiddler.
True to the book
but again unusually for an adaptation there’s no Belle at the party, and we also
get both of the Belle scenes. This means there’s something of a continuity
problem when we hear Belle’s husband tell her that Scrooge’s partner is dying,
given that we saw him die quite suddenly in the flashback earlier. We can only
assume perhaps that on this particular occasion Marley recovered and the died
later, the same wiggle room that Tony Jordan just about gets away with in Dickensian.
There is a fun
touch of Scrooge describing Belle’s children as “brats”, then remembering that
the spirit is there with him and putting on a show of saying what lovely
children they are!
 |
| Put some bloody trousers on would you mate? |
Present:
The Ghost of Christmas
Present is very much closer to the Father Christmas look than usual here, with
a red robe and a long white beard. Having that colour beard means he doesn’t
visibly age at the end of the section, but instead starts to fade in an out a bit.
Scrooge mentions what he experienced “last night,” a reminder that originally
the visitations were supposed to be happening on successive evenings, something
usually edited out of Marley’s warnings and which even Dickens seems to have
realised was a bad idea as they all needed to be over and done with by
Christmas morning.
The spirit’s
torch only appears in his hand when he needs it to drop Christmas cheer – seemingly
instead of making a meal seem grander, actually increasing the sizes
of people’s turkeys so they are more grand. We spend quite a bit of time
outside a bakery, info-dumping about why the poor needed to take their birds
there to be cooked and using the spirit’s festive cheer to stop an argument,
before heading off to the Cratchits’.
Tiny Tim here
seems much younger than he’s usually depicted, only just being into full
walking and talking age, perhaps. There’s the usual toast to Scrooge and Mrs Cratchit’s
less-than-thrilled reaction to it, before we get another bit not usually
included – the trip to the lighthouse. We drop in on Fred’s Christmas lunch, which
like the Fezziwigs’ party earlier seems a much smaller and quieter affair than
usual, before we finish up with the spirit showing Scrooge Ignorance and Want,
and giving his grave warning about them.
Yet to Come:
The Ghost of
Christmas Yet to Come is a traditional version, floating along in a hood with
only darkness beneath it. Something about the hood and the way in which it
floats along does bring to mind Orko from the Masters of the Universe
cartoons, though.
In a move which
it’s perhaps surprising isn’t done more often, the gentlemen discussing Scrooge’s
death are the chartable gentlemen from the beginning. There’s an odd bit at the
inn where Scrooge is shown someone else sitting in the place where he usually
sits for lunch, before we’re with Old Joe for an almost entirely faithful
recreation of almost all of that scene.
We see the
Cratchits grieving for Tim, and then an example of someone else living a better
life than Scrooge by actually giving some money to the charitable gentlemen. We
finish up at Scrooge’s grave, where he clings to the spirit begging to be told
these events can be changed, before he wakes up clinging to the bedpost.
What’s To-Day:
The boy outside Scrooge’s
window is promised half a crown straight off to run to the butcher, rather than
told he can have it if he’s back in five minutes. The whole section is quite
brief, really, but then again it is in the book as well.
Scrooge goes to
Fred’s for lunch where he is warmly received, and even has a go at singing a
bit of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. Not very well, admittedly. We don’t
see anything of the Cratchits on Christmas Day, but we do get Scrooge pulling
his little joke on Bob the following morning, before revealing all is well and
the end credits roll.
Review:
It’s hard to
decide quite what to make of this version overall. It certainly includes a lot
more of the book than many other adaptations do, but in other respects it frequently
isn’t as true to the story as it might be. All the way through, a lot of the best-known
and most memorable lines from the book are delivered as rough approximations or
simplifications of the original dialogue. Of course this will always be necessary
to some degree, but never as much as it is here – it’s as if they perhaps
panicked a little about what their audience in 1982 might understand or be prepared
to put up with.
You might think
this would only irk a purist and not matter to most people. Perhaps, but unfortunately,
I think it means that a lot of the dialogue isn’t as good nor as sharp as it
could and should be. Some of their invented bits of business also feel strange
or just don’t work. Scrooge throws a bit of coal on the fire near the
beginning, for example; I get that perhaps they were trying to show how mean he
was by only putting a small lump of coal on, but the fact that he did it at all
makes him seem less of a miser than he ought to at this point.
There’s also the
same problem faced by the 1969 version, in that while Haddrick is quite
spirited in the role, he’s no much good at an English accent and Scrooge sounds
Australian. Indeed, the problem is more prominent here as unlike the 1969
version several of the other characters also have Australian accents, perhaps
most notably Marley and the Ghost of Christmas Past.
But for all that,
I’m not saying that I hated this version, or that it’s an awful one. In terms
of incident and content it’s very faithful to the book, far more so than many
others, and it’s certainly a cut above the likes of the 1997 and 2001 animated
adaptations. I just wish perhaps they’d had more confidence in the abilities of
the original author and his dialogue; he is Charles Dickens, after all!
In a nutshell:
By no means bad,
and would certainly work as an introduction to the story for children, I think.
But also not up there with the very best versions.
Links:
Wikipedia
IMDb
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