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| Title card for the retitled 1926 edit. |
Title:
Scrooge (also known as Old Scrooge)
Format:
Silent film
Country:
UK
Production
company:
Zenith Film
Company
Year:
1913 / 1926
Length:
40 minutes
(approximately)
Setting:
Victorian
Background:
Zenith, the
company behind this adaptation, were founded in 1913 and then purchased by
British Empire Films Ltd two years later, before eventually being dissolved in
1922. Their offices were based in Westminster, and they apparently used a
studio at Whetstone in North London. This wasn’t the only literary adaptation
they made; they were also responsible for an early version of Ivanhoe.
This film was
re-released in the USA by Pathe in 1926, when it was retitled Old Scrooge.
It was this version which I was able to get hold of a copy of, and it wasn’t
simply a retitling. Comparing what I was able to watch to the synopses of the
1913 version on the British Film Institute’s website and in the Illustrated
Films Monthly at the time of the original version’s release, it’s clear
that several narrative changes had been made to the 1920s version, and I’ll try
and note the main differences below.
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| Seymour Hicks as Scrooge - looking very like The Grinch! |
Cast and crew:
Seymour Hicks
stars as Scrooge, a part he’d already been playing for many years on stage, and
would continue to reprise in the theatre for many years after this. He also
returned to the role on screen in the sound era, taking the lead in the 1935 film version. Clearly regarded as something of an expert on the character,
interestingly the BFI website also credits him as having been responsible for
writing the adaptation here.
The director
Leedham Bantock is a very interesting figure. He was the boss of Zenith Films,
but had previously primarily been a stage actor who then moved into film. His
most notable credit is being the first person known to have played Father
Christmas on screen, in the 1912 film Santa Claus. He also appears in
the cast here, although as there aren’t full credits available it’s difficult
to tell as who.
Of the rest of
the cast, William Lugg had been a successful stage actor of the Victorian era,
and JC Buckstone, like Hicks, had some history with the Carol. He’d written a stage version in 1901, which he’d then adapted for the very first known screen adaptation of the Carol that same year. Ellaline Terriss had
been born in the Falkland Islands and lived to be 100, dying in 1971. Her
presence here may be a bit of a case of insider dealing, as she was Seymour
Hicks’s wife.
Underdone Potato:
Both versions of
the film begin with an introductory device of Scrooge coming up with the idea
for A Christmas Carol, and settling down to write it. The BFI’s Screenonline website suggests this seems designed to show that Dickens himself would have
approved of this adaptation, although to me it feels more like a lesson or a
lecture, especially with the 1926 version’s intertitles, setting out the
background to the story before showing the tale itself. When Scrooge is first
mentioned, however, there is a nice portrait-type shot of him, glaring and
glowering into the camera.
The first major
difference between the two versions occurs early on – the 1913 version show’s
nephew Fred, given the surname Wyland here, giving money to children on the
street, but in the 1926 edit he doesn’t appear until later on. In common with
some other versions, we do see Tim earlier than we do in the book here, as his
father carries him to work before seemingly abandoning him in the street for
the day when he goes inside.
Quite a lot of
time is spent on the scenes up to Marley’s arrival, more so than any other
aspect of the story. Indeed, it’s even extended somewhat from the book with
scenes of “carol singers” (they look like meddlesome kids to me!) throwing
snowballs at Scrooge, and the parts of the two charitable gentlemen being split
into two – a poor woman who visits Scrooge first, and then later a Mr
Middlemark, ‘a guardian of the poor’.
There’s another
difference between the two versions here – in the UK original, we have a
cutaway to a scene of Middlemark handing out food to the poor, and then going
to see Scrooge when there is none left. The 1926 US edit omits this, and just
has Middlemark turn up after Fred’s visit.
Perhaps
understandingly given the restrictions of time, space and budget, Scrooge
doesn’t go home but just settles down to sleep in an armchair in his office,
where he’s visited by the spirit of Marley – perhaps hinting, more so than in
most other versions, that the whole thing is ‘just a dream’? Marley appears
translucently in an impressive example of special effects, not simply standing
still but moving around the set and interacting with Scrooge, although he lacks
something in not being chained in this version.
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| Ah yes, that's it! Dickens comes up with the idea... |
Past:
Marley says that
he has come as the representative of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and
Yet to Come – so in common with the 1901 version, it’s Marley who
presents all of the visions here. Not so much representing them as doing all of
their work for them, the lazy sods. Perhaps there was a lot of haunting that
needed doing this particular Christmas!
There’s no
Fezziwig, but we do have the other main ‘past’ visions usually shown – Scrooge
at school, and Belle setting him free. There’s a change from the book here, in
he intertitles for the US version at least, with Marley reminding Scrooge that
he later ‘abandoned’ Fan, rather than her having died young as in the story. We
do see an actor playing the young Scrooge at school, but fortunately unlike in
the 1935 version there’s no attempt to pass off Hicks as a younger version, and
he’s unseen in the sequence with Belle, with only her being shown.
Present:
We see a little
of the Cratchits’ Christmas celebration, with the toast to Scrooge, and there’s
a detail I quite liked where Tim, made up to look ‘ill’ with panda-like eye
make-up, stares hauntingly out at us, directly into the camera.
Rather than the
little taste of foreknowledge the Ghost of Christmas Present usually shares
about an empty space and a crutch without an owner, Marley shows Scrooge an
actual full-blown vision of Tim’s deathbed, and the moment of his expiring. As
is done all-too-often, Scrooge’s redemption seems to have come rather too
early, as he declares ‘what a fool I’ve been!’ before we’ve even had the vision
of the future.
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| Marley is responsible for all of the visions in this version. |
Yet to Come:
Having said that,
there isn’t a great deal of the future to see – just a gravestone bearing the
words ‘Ebenezer Scrooge – He Lived and Died Without a Friend,’ which is rather
on-the-nose but seems to have done the trick. I doubt you’d be allowed to put
that on a gravestone in the real world, however!
What’s To-Day:
There is where
the 1913 and 1926 versions seems to be intriguingly different, at least
comparing what I watched to the synopsis available in the Illustrated Films
Monthly from 1913. In the UK original, Scrooge awakes on Christmas morning,
and goes to visit the Cratchit family, joining in with their Christmas
celebrations and even soliciting a kiss from Mrs Cratchit under the mistletoe.
However, in the
version I watched, it’s still Christmas Eve when Scrooge awakes. After sending
the boy for the bird (who comes into his office in this version, or rather is
pulled in rather roughly, and knows Tiny Tim – Scrooge asks if the boy is still
alive, and the bird-boy replies that yes, he saw him earlier in the evening),
he then merely settles down to ‘imagine’ what it would be like if he spent
Christmas Day with the Cratchits. We then get his vision of kissing Mrs
Cratchit, etc.
The 1926 version
then does the bit from the book of Scrooge pretending to be cross with Cratchit
on boxing day – which wouldn’t make sense of Scrooge had gone there on
Christmas Day. So was this an alternative ending using footage shot for but not
used in the 1913 original? If so, how did they get hold of it 13 years later?
Or did the original intertitles perhaps suggest Cratchit feared Scrooge had had
a change of heart? Or are the available synopses of the 1913 version simply
wrong?
Sadly, without
going to the BFI to view the copy of the 1913 version they apparently hold,
which perhaps I may try someday, there’s no way to answer this at the moment.
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| Scrooge asks Mrs Cratchit for a kiss! |
Review:
There is a lot to
like here. The location shooting outside Scrooge’s office looks very good, and
I genuinely can’t tell if it’s real or fake snow being used. In the 1926
version, at least, there are some nice tinting effects going on, with a cold
blue for the outdoor scenes and then a drab brown once we inside Scrooge’s mean
abode. It’s just a shame they didn’t even try to make the window for the set of
Scrooge’s office at least vaguely resemble the one he’s seen calling Cratchit
in through in the location footage.
It’s certainly
much more ambitious and expansive than the 1901 or 1910 silent versions,
although it does perhaps waste too much of its running time on the pre-ghost
sequences, and rather throws away or rushes through much of the rest of the
story.
The intertitles
do include a fair amount of Dickens’s original text as and when they can,
although they’re also interspersed with all sorts of weird additions, such as
acknowledging that children really shouldn’t throw snowballs at old men. I’m
fairly sure the intertitles I saw were made for the 1926 version, however – we
have Fred’s good ‘humor’ spelt the American way, and also a reference to a
‘corner store’ which feels rather transatlantic, so I don’t know how much they
might differ from the 1913 ones.
Hicks certainly looks
great as Scrooge – and weirdly, he also seems to quite closely resemble another
figure from a well-known Christmas story, the Grinch. I wonder if Dr Seuss had
ever seen this? He’d have been 22 when it came out in the US in 1926 – a bit of
a stretch, though, admittedly!
In a nutshell:
It feels like an
ambitious production for its time, but an imbalanced one – too much time it
spent on the earliest sections, given an uneven and ultimately unsatisfying
feel.
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