On Christmas Eve in early Victorian London a young man named Fred is on his way to visit his uncle Ebenezer Scrooge, the famous literary miser who doesn’t believe Christmas is anything more than Humbug. There are some boys sliding on ice on his way, and Fred slides with them, to the amusement of tiny Tim Cratchit who’s watching his brother Peter and the others as they slide. Fred, overwhelmed with Christmas joy encourages Tim to try sliding as well, but the boy apologizes saying he is not so good with running. It is only them that Fred notices the boy’s crooked legs, and hiding how sorry he feels, he picks the boy up in his back and slides once more, this time taking tiny Tim along… This was a beautiful scene to open the 1938 adaptation of A Christmas Carol, and one that perfectly exemplifies the joyful and lighthearted mood of this version. It’s one of the best renditions of Fred I have ever seen and the same goes for Bob Cratchit and a lot of other characters.
Scrooge of 1951 is generally considered the best version of Dickens’ classic, and I agree that Alistair Sim’s performance made for a more definitive Scrooge than Reginald Owen. Mr. Owen’s Scrooge is not quite so three-dimensional and Sim’s and he often comes across as a buffon, something of a comic relief, which is light years away from mr. Sim’s human depiction of Scrooge.
Be that as it may, I really like the 1938 version, simply because it’s much more joyful and it feels a lot more like Christmas most of the time (white the 1951 version can be too dark at times). It had to be, I suppose, as a film that came out in the middle of the Depression. Some of the grimmer aspects of the original story were dropped to achieve this lightness and to make the film fit in short 69 minutes…
Scrooge’s transformation is certainly very fast, and before the Ghost of Christmas Yet to come has shown him anything he is already a reformed man, who loves Christmas and wants to change, which I guess is in accordance with the general mood of the film, dropping the darkest aspects of the book.
The film could have been completely different. Another actor was supposed to play Scrooge, mtr. Lionel Barrymore, whose voice is heard narrating the trailler, and played Scrooge yearly on the radio at the time. But he was prevented from joining the film on account of his arthritis, and Reginald Owen was called. In fact, in a demonstration of class, Lionel refused even to play Ebenezer on the radio that year, so as not to take away from Owen’s performance, only to return to the role a year later.
Considering the time in which this version was made and the fact that it was by MGM, it is unfair to compare it to the 1951 version, really. I wish the film included more of the original material but that it is a lighter version doesn’t diminish the story, and it’s worth remembering that for a long time it was the most widely available version and only picture-length adaptation, after a number of silent versions and a British one in 1935. It’s definitely very enjoyable, and watching it makes it feel like Christmas… What more can one ask of a movie?
A Cristmas Carol | 1938 | Directed by Edwin L. Marin | Written by Hugo Butler | Reginald Owen, Gene Lockhart, Kathleen Lockhart, Terry Kilburn, Barry MacKay
No comments:
Post a Comment