25 Days of Christmas | Scrooge, 1951

A Christmas Carol | 1951

A poster of the coloured version of the story,
one I didn't have chance to see yet. I often
wondered how do they do these later colouring
of black and white movies, and
if the colours are faithful to the original.

Sometimes it seems like there are as many film adaptations of A Christmas Carol as Christmases since the story was first published in England in the 19th century. The 1951 version featuring Alastair Scrooge is certainly among the very best.

The story is very well known. On Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge, a wealthy and tight-fisted man of business who considered Christmas to be humbug is visited by the ghost of his former partner in business, Jacob Marley, a stingy man in life who’s become a tortured ghost, forced to carry a heavy cross in his death on account of the type of life he had.

“I wear the chain I forged in life! I made it link by link and yard by yard! I gartered it on of my own free will and by my own free will, I wore it! In life, my spirit never rose beyond the limits of our money-changing holes! Now I am doomed to wander without rest or peace, incessant torture and remorse! (…) BUSINESS? Mankind was my business! Their common welfare was my business! And it is at this time of the rolling year that I suffer most!”

Marley warns Scrooge that he will be visited by three other ghosts, who will give him an oportunity to redeem himself, and avoid the same dreadful fate. The ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet-to-come then proceed to visit Ebenezer, taking him to see many Christmases he’s forgotten or ignored, effectively reforming his way of thinking and transforming him in a better man who makes the world around him brighter by his presence.

I had never seen such a complete depiction of the visits of the Ghost of Christmas past as in this 1951 version. The movie expands on the story of Scrooge’s rise as a business man. There is also a powerful scene (not present in the book) in which we see the death of his sister, and his younger self leaves her room before she can whisper a wish only his older self now can hear, a wish that Ebenezer should look after her boy, Fred, a nephew Scrooge often ignored, effectively forgetting he was his mother’s son. The older Scrooge finally hears her last request, and immediately breaks down in apologies, which of course can not be heard.

The 1951 version is perhaps the best loved adaptation of A Christmas Carol yet, and, not surprisingly it was a box office disappointment when it first came out. The general tone of the movie was considered too dark and sullen for a Christmas story, so it didn’t premier at Radio City Music Hall as it should. Be that as it may, it was one of the most popular films in Britain by 1952. 

It’s way too easy for adaptations of a Christmas Carol to fall into the trap of portraying Scrooge as an unfeeling monster prior to Marley’s unsolicited visit. But that wasn’t the case… He was an awful person, a poor excuse for a human being, but still, a man. He’s not a juggernaut incapable of talking to anybody else in town, he is a productive – however unpleasant – member of society, and we get to see that in the first scene when he talks somewhat amiably with other men of business at the London Exchange. Mr. Alistair Sim is a fantastic actor. He makes Scrooge seem.. human. And that’s the great triumph of this movie and the reason why mr Sim's Scrooge is considered the definitive.



Scrooge | 1951 | 87’ | Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst | Script by Noel Langley | Alastair Sim, Marvyn Johns, Hermione Baddeley, Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Michael Hordern, George Cole