1923 and Scrooge (1935)
A Christmas Carol (1923)
One more silent film! This time the 1923 version starring Russel Thorndike as Scrooge.
This one kicks off with an interesting quote on a title card: “Wise men have always contended that the toughest skin that covers any animal is to be found on that of a miser. Nothing short of a miracle can ever regenerate him”.
What makes it interesting is that it doesn’t come from Dickens at all and I can’t find any source other than this movie to attribute it to. In fact, while “miser” is probably the first word some might think of when describing Ebenezer Scrooge, the word “miser” is not written anywhere in the book. The quote is followed by a description of Scrooge as a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, coveting old sinner” which IS taken directly from the story, so we’re on the right track!
The first noticeable thing is that the picture quality is not fantastic. Whether that is because the surviving copy is in poor shape or the film equipment wasn’t that great, I cannot say, but it’s a step down from the previous one for sure.
I like the insertion of more description cards here, as they set the scene a little for us, particularly that Marley is dead, something Dickens beats the reader over the head with for a few paragraphs at the beginning of the novella. The cards also introduce characters by name as well and I think for the first time, actually give us dialogue!
We have Scrooge and Bob as normal, Fred arrives and Scrooge responds to his greeting with a “Humbug!” It took 20 years of film progress, but we finally got a humbug! The written dialogue has Scrooge responding “What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older”, but they took out the “without money” here and changed “year” to “day”.
Their conversation continues pretty accurately, until Scrooge says “Every idiot that goes about with merry Christmas on his lips, should be boiled in his own pudding and buried in a holly through his heart.” I don’t know if that’s a 1923 typo, but it should be “buried with a stake of holly through his heart”. I’m not sure if that is too violent to write in a film at the time or something like that, but what they have written makes little sense. Fred leaves and gives some change to a caroler outside.
In perhaps the most comical change possible, instead of Scrooge threatening the caroler with a ruler and scaring him away from his window, Scrooge decides to grab a book and physically assault the poor kid by bashing him over the head with it. Russel Thorndike wins the prize for most hardcore Scrooge so far!
Just one charity fellow shows up with some pretty accurate dialogue but then we get an odd scene where “Mrs. Fred” and her sister are setting up their house for the Christmas party, and Fred arrives to tell her about his interaction with Scrooge. I’m not really sure what the scene added to the story, other than introducing Fred’s wife early.
Scrooge chastises Bob and we cut to Scrooge in his chambers (no door knocker!). Marley’s ghost appears out of the darkness and I must admit, it’s a pretty cool effect! Scrooge is shocked and blames it on his liver for some reason. This version actually has Marley saying the spirits will appear on separate nights, which is accurate to the novella. Most adaptations just change it to all in one night, as Scrooge basically experiences them that way as time seems to skip forward after each Spirit. But it does set up the joke of “Couldn’t I take ’em all at once and have it over?” (Which also is in the book)
I feel the need to point out that we’re over halfway through this film and the Spirits just only now showed up, which I think is a little unbalanced.
The 1st Spirit looks just like a shrunken down person. The text does say the spirit has child-like proportions, but they didn’t really get any of the other descriptors, it looks like a pretty normal guy otherwise. “Behold the girl who would not marry you because your heart was obsessed by love of gold…” the Spirit says to Scrooge. Not a very subtle spirit, is he? The scenes play in his bedroom like some of the earlier silent films.
The Spirit skips Scrooge’s childhood, and Fezziwig’s party. All we get is the breakup with Belle.
“And so you have lived alone with your gold — when you and she might have been so happy!” the Spirit tells Scrooge. Again, I think you are laying it on a little thick for the audience there.
Christmas Past checks out (with his cap at least!) and Present comes in, looking like the ghost of Rasputin instead of the typical jolly giant. I found this part completely laughable. The Ghost of Christmas Present tells Scrooge that he will spend his day at Fred and Bob’s house and at the homes of all who love Christmas and tells Scrooge not to beg him to stay, as he has no love for his fellow man. Then he just disappears, even though Scrooge begs him to stay, without giving any justification for why.
He didn’t actually show Scrooge anything to make him realize what Christmas is about or how those he knows are spending it. I was a bit concerned when I realized how little time was left in the film, but I would argue that the Spirits are the crux of the story and this version just glazes over it. It’s hard to believe Scrooge would change at all with how poor a job these spirits are doing!
The Ghost of Christmas Future shows up looking like an average guy wearing a bag on his head. I can’t tell if Scrooge is supposed to be shaking in fear, or trying to resist the Spirit beckoning him. Either way like most of the previous versions, he just shows Scrooge his own grave. Which leads me to the observation of how poor of a haunting that is. Everybody is mortal, so showing Scrooge his grave in the future shouldn’t really accomplish much. The most important parts are where it shows how people did not honor his memory or were happy to see him die. That’s the wake up call that could instill change in someone.
These are definitely the worst filmed spirits so far. They show Scrooge his break-up and his tombstone, that’s it. We don’t even see Tiny Tim and the rest of the Cratchits! I guess they showed Fred’s party setup earlier because we don’t get to see his party either. We get some good book-accurate dialogue with the final Spirit, but it all seems totally unearned. Scrooge awakens and proclaims he is changed (though it certainly doesn’t feel like he should be!)
Then, maybe the strangest scene of all, as we go to “Topper”, a character so minor I didn’t think he was even worth mentioning in my outline. I am shocked that a movie made this early even thought to include him. In the novella, he’s a guest at Fred’s party who Scrooge notices is being flirtatious with Fred’s wife’s sister. That’s about the extent of his importance. And here he seems to be serenading her? Fred and his wife get a chuckle out of it and then Scrooge surprisingly shows up. With less than a minute left in the film, Scrooge sends for Bob and announces his salary doubling. With a “Whoop!” and a “Hallo!” (Which is accurate dialogue, surprisingly) the film ends.
For a one word-review, to quote the modern Christmas-classic Home Alone, “Woof!”. I think this one almost completely missed the point. I thought we were headed in such a good direction with the introduction of dialogue taken straight from Dickens, but I think they completely removed the real heart of the story by taking focus away from the Spirits and not showing the Cratchits beyond Bob. Instead, we get Scrooge smacking a caroler, Fred setting up his party, and Topper being “funny”, as if they add more to the story somehow. Without a doubt, this is the weakest of the silent films.
A Christmas Carol (1935)
I should have done more research, as the 1928 version is a short film that also appears to be hard to find. So I’ll be moving on to the first theatrical length sound version, “Scrooge” from 1935, starring Seymour Hicks as Scrooge. Seymour Hicks had apparently made a name for himself for portraying Scrooge, as he performed the role on stage many times and also appeared as Scrooge in the silent film version from 1913.
This version is old enough that it is in kind of poor shape, so no one distributes it on physical media and it appears to be free on Youtube as well! This one finally hits feature length, with a 1 hour and 17 minute runtime, so I’m excited to see if it makes good use of that time!
We start with a rather dismal street band trying their best at “The First Noel”. I can see why Scrooge might hate Christmas if he had to hear that outside his window all day! The charitable men show up before Fred this time. It’s a relief to finally be able to comment on acting more now that I can hear the performances!
From the first few scenes, I think Hicks does a fine job. He’s gruff and rude, but it’s not too over-the-top or comical. Scrooge chastises Bob over the cost of adding more coal to the fire, his mumbling, and is rather threatening about his pay. Fred arrives and I think rushes through his lines a little bit. He sounds like he’s being antagonistic to Scrooge more than actually trying to befriend him and defend Christmas, but the dialogue is pretty faithful. Scrooge scares away the caroler, without committing a crime this time!
Bob is sent home and we get treated to some B-roll of Bob enjoying playing around on the ice with some kids. Some more odd B-roll of debutantes attending a big party, some chefs preparing a big dinner, and then Scrooge at his tavern meal who is annoyed by all the noise of celebrations. Then an odd cut to the “Lord Mayor of London” (who gets introduced by someone who sounds like Michael Palin’s Roman-with-a-speech-impediment from Monty Python’s Life of Brian) who starts everyone singing in a rousing rendition of “God Save the Queen”. I’m perplexed why they gathered so many extras to film some scenes that don’t really add much to the story or the atmosphere.
Scrooge leaves the tavern (where we see that even dogs don’t seem to like him much). He arrives at his house and Marley’s face briefly appears in the door knocker. He seems to shrug it off pretty well and doesn’t provide any context about it either. As he sits to his meal, the ringing bell announces the arrival of Marley’s ghost.
And what an arrival it is! The most disappointing ghost portrayal that might be possible! As Marley blatantly says, “Only you can see me, Scrooge”, and he is literally invisible to the audience, we just hear his voice. Poor Seymour Hicks has to emote to an empty chair. I was flabbergasted seeing this. How did multiple silent films have an absolutely acceptable ghost effect, and this movie, which came out only 4 years before “The Wizard of Oz”, can’t even dress a guy up in chains and make him look spooky? For shame. He finishes his spiel (“You will see me no more!” he states. We never did, Jacob…) about the visiting spirits and invisibly goes out a window.
The clock strikes 12:00 and the Ghost of Christmas Past arrives. He appears to just be a roughly-man shaped being of light who shows up for a few seconds (reminds me of something the Enterprise crew would have ran into on Star Trek).
Scrooge is shown his past in a dream-like format, where he cruelly will not give some of his loaners more time. Belle overhears this and rejects Scrooge for his cruelty. (Note that Scrooge is still played as Seymour Hicks as a “young man” and Belle looks like she’s a solid 20 years younger than him, but hey, Victorian times were different, I guess?) Her rejection and the soundtrack which sounds like it comes from a Universal Horror film are a little too dramatic, I think.
We then get Belle dancing around a Christmas tree with a bunch of children, which segues into the first time where we see Belle and her husband discussing Scrooge being alone. There’s a positive among the rest of the disappointment at least! (They completely skip Scrooge as a young man, Fan, and Fezziwig’s party).
The Ghost of Christmas Present shows up, looking a little wider than taller, but it’s better than our last two excuses for Spirits! He touches the Spirit’s robe and we are treated to Bob walking home from church with Tiny Tim in tow and then the Cratchit’s Christmas day dinner. We do get some shots of the Spirit and Scrooge watching through a window, to at least show us that he was there instead of seeing it as a vision in his bedroom. I guess it’s one of those “because it was the style at the time” but Bob is over-acting a bit here too, especially in his speech about how Tiny Tim wanted to remind people who made lame beggars walk, which he delivers like William Shatner. We get a kind of odd amount of B-roll of them preparing food and yelling instead of just being a loving family, which is set to music that sounds like it came from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Scrooge asks about Tiny Tim and gets his surplus population quote thrown back at him by the Spirit, one of my favorite lines of the story. Bob suggests that Tiny Tim sings for everyone and the Spirit and Scrooge take their leave while the whole city sings “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and in a montage with the song, we even see the lighthouse and the ship that are briefly mentioned in the story. Major props for including them, even though the Spirit never gets to mention why we are seeing them.
We cut to Fred’s party, where again, Fred seems to be kind of a mocking jerk, with him and the party goers overly laughing about Scrooge. Between this scene and Fred at the beginning, I think they really did a disservice to the character.
Immediately after the laughter, Scrooge awakens to the Ghost of Christmas Future, who he says he fears more than any other Spirit he has seen. It’s tough for the audience to relate, as we literally only see the shadow of a pointing finger. With this last “ghost”, I think I’m prepared to say that this movie certainly has the lamest Spirit portrayals so far.
In a welcome relief, we see the first filmed version of the businessmen joking about Scrooge’s demise (while the shadowy finger keeps comically pointing). We also see the first versions of the ladies selling Scrooge’s belongings to Old Joe. While the dialogue is pretty accurate, this scenes pacing is rather dragged out. We also see Scrooge’s body covered in his sheets.
Scrooge asks to be shown some tenderness, and rather than see the couple who are relieved that Scrooge is dead, we see the sad state of the Cratchits. The scene goes normally until Bob goes upstairs to LOOK AT TINY TIM’S CORPSE! Really going for the feels there! Even though he talked about his cemetery plot with Mrs. Cratchit, which they apparently bought while Tiny Tim’s body was chilling upstairs, which is more than a little strange!
Finally, Scrooge is taken to his gravestone by the Finger of Christmas Future. I think Hicks does a great job acting out his plea here and in the following scenes of his reformation. We get some comical reactions from a house servant of Scrooge’s (which I assume they added so it isn’t just Scrooge talking to himself) and he sends a boy outside to buy the turkey. Scrooge shaves for some reason and then heads off to pick up the turkey himself, where he lobs a snowball at the shop owner when he wakes him up to open the store. He gives extra money to his servant, the turkey seller and the delivery boy and we are treated to more Looney Tunes-esque music as Scrooge heads to Fred’s party, where he creepily stares at a Christmas tree for a little before dinner.
Finally, we are treated to the book-accurate ending where Bob arrives late the next day and Scrooge pretends to scold him and double his salary. They awkwardly through the narrative line about Scrooge becoming a second-father to Tiny Tim by having Scrooge outright declare to Bob that he will do so.
Our final scene shows Scrooge going into a church and joining Bob and others in singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. The novella does mention that Scrooge stops in a church on his way into his business, but the story doesn’t end there. I think that’s a little bit of a religious appeasement, as while God is mentioned a few times in the written story, it is interesting how Dickens’ work is not really overtly religious. While charity and goodwill towards men are obviously tenets of Christianity, he actually wrote a bit where Scrooge says it is the will of Christmas that places where people can be fed are closed on Sunday, and The Ghost of Christmas Present responds with the following: “There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”
I don’t think I am a Dickens scholar by any means, but I take that to be a pretty interesting condemnation of people Dickens may have seen as being false-Christians, but I may be misinterpreting.
Either way, our first sound version takes two steps forward and two steps back in my eyes. We finally get some much-needed scenes for depth, like the reactions to Scrooge’s death and old Joe, but at the cost of most of the Spirits’ spectacle being diminished by their lame portrayals. A couple of weird scenes like the singing could have been removed to add in more needed things like Scrooge as a boy. I enjoyed some of the acting, but things like Fred’s harshness were disappointing. We were close to a great version, but I think it falls short of being a good representation of the story.
Next time I’m moving to the first version that I have on Blu ray, so hopefully that is indicative of a jump in quality!
Thanks for reading and merry Christmas!
