Going against popular opinion, it seems, I don’t like the George C. Scott version. Scott is too robust and growly; I don’t see him as a man being transformed during the course of the Three Visits. He is “unrepentant Scrooge” until the end of the visit of the Third Spirit, when suddenly he is “repentant Scrooge” – there’s a leap, but no evolution behind it. Plus the hairstyle of the First Spirit just screams “1980s!” to me; she may as well be wearing an off-the-shoulder torn sweatshirt and a pair of legwarmers. That pulls me out of the period of the piece and into the period when it was made. No likee.
George C. Scott up to now, hands down, but I’ve never seen the Sim version (although my brother-in-law swears by it) so now I’ve just got to see it. The Patrick Stewart version underwhelmed me, and the Kelsey Grammer version was pretty blah.
The Sim version is always No. 1 with me. I like how the story’s fleshed out a bit, to show how Scrooge, as a young clark, first met Marley when they both worked for old Fezziwig, and then how they engineered a shady takeover of his company and of other business entities. Additionally, the scene where young Scrooge glares viciously at the newborn Fred, his nephew, after his sister’s death, is another terrific touch and serves to explain why he’s at odds with Fred later on. I’m also a big Michael Hordern fan, and I thought he made a marvelous Marley (both corporeal and incorporeal).
I always give high rankings to ACC versions which go into the grim/creepy details- the phantom hearse, the wandering ghosts, the debauched waifs at the feet of TGoC Present, the pawnshop ghouls, and also flesh out details- how Scrooge met Marley, the courtship with Belle, the death of Fan, etc.
And that said- my rankings-
1.) Sim
CLOSELY FOLLOWED BY
2.) Stewart TNT movie
3.) Finney SCROOGE musical
4/5.)Toss-up Scott & Caine
The animated versions & the knock-offs are a totally different category.
I think I was fortunate enough to get Amazon’s last copy of the VHS ACC cartoon with Alistair Sim about five years ago. (I expect to get a VHS>DVD recorder for Christmas…
just sayin’…)
I didn’t dislike the Grammer musical- indeed, the only sour note was Jason Alexander’s/Marley’s klezmer-style song about the clinking of coins in the moneybox. Jewish stereotype much?!?
The Jane Krakowski-CmasPast bedpost/pole-dance was a bonus!
Every year Galveston gets all dolled up for Christmas. Victorian-themed, with a special emphasis put on A Christmas Carol. And downtown the Alley Theatre usually does an especially fantastic show of it. It’s a great experience.
I give props to the Muppets, where it belongs. Accessible to even the youngest, appreciateble by even the stuffiest, joyous when the story was joyous, terrifying and heartbreaking when it needed to be. And what an ending! But the original Carol, not the jazzercized-up remake they did a few years later (why, Disney, why?!) While I’m at it, I think Tiny Toons had a good run of doing It’s a Wonderful Life, another holiday adaptation staple, but there’s neither here nor there now.
Agreed on all points. I would like to add that the Scott as Scrooge also manages to elicit pity from me.
There is also the moment at Fred’s party when his wife makes the joke at Scrooge’s expense, and he corrects her. You realize that Scrooge was loved, but he just turned his back on it.
I’m really sorry that they didn’t just film Patrick Stewart performing his one-man show, instead of making a full-fledged movie. He was fantastic all on his own when I saw him on Broadway. Since we’ve probably lost the chance to see that on film, I go with the Sim version. Very atmospheric.
I own 4 versions (Sim, Scott, Muppets, Magoo) and saw a 5th already this year (Owen)…
Not impressed with Reginald Owen. Hate his silly walk…look at me, I’m an old man. And demerits for having Scrooge show up at Cratchit’s house (as do Muppets & Magoo), instead of laying in wait for him at work on the 26th – my favorite scene in any version. So I give the nod to Sim, just on the basis of this scene. (And the “Barbara Allen” scene with Fred and his wife chokes me up, every time.)
Sim
Magoo (great songs*)
Scott
Muppets (also great songs, but they tend to blur together. I often find myself starting one song in my head, and the end turns into lines from a different song)
Owen
Not sure if it’s legend or fact…but Merrill & Styne had a ballad ready to go for Magoo’s Christmas Carol, but couldn’t squeeze it in in time. So they saved it and put it in their next musical. The show was “Funny Girl” - the song was “People”. I could see it working nicely as Belle’s song.
Another demerit for Reginald Owen – in the denouement, we find out that Scrooge made *Fred *his partner. WTF?
An advantage of an animated version…you can make Tiny Tim truly tiny. Owen’s TT looked like he could play linebacker on a high school football team, and his poor father could barely lift him.
I’m fond of the musical Scrooge although I can’t argue that it’s the best version out there. But it has the best Jacob Marley! He scared me so much when I was little, and delights me so much now. (Take a chair.)
Honestly, for me, it’s not the best version, it’s the only one. Albert Finney and Alec Guinness were, IMO, some of the best actors to ever live. The music is great, the direction is great, the special effects are way beyond their years. I still have no idea how the door knocker effect was done.
I remember Animaniacs did a short take on it, with the Warner Bros CEO as Scrooge firing Ralph the security guard and being visited by the 3 warners as the Christmas ghosts. It was pretty clever how they managed to compress the basic story into about 10 minutes.
I’d also like to mention one of my favorite Simpsons moments of all time:
Burns: You down there! What day is it today?
Child: Today? Why, today is Christmas day!
Burns: Not you, you! What day is it today?
Bart: Huh?
Burns: I’ll tell you what day it is, today is the day you become my heir!
We had very high winds in my area yesterday evening, so much so that the lights in my house were flickering. I huddled in bed waiting for the lights to go out and the hearse to gallop by.
All the points for liking Scott’s interpretation are the same reasons I dislike it. It seems to me that it comes down to people liking the Scott version better than Dickens.
Dickens intended for us to hate Scrooge. The story is not and was not intended to be some subtle psychological study. Revealing Scrooge as anything less than hateful too soon softens the later impact and fatally weakens the rest of the story, including his final conversion.
Just seeing his young self abandoned at school for Christmas didn’t?
There are two points in the story (not necessarily in the films) that show this: the scene where Belle ends her engagement to Scrooge, and the Spirit of Christmas Present’s one reference to Fred as the son of Scrooge’s beloved sister. And, of course, it’s a bit more complicated than “just” turning his back on love.
You’ve never actually read any Dickens, I take it.
