Hello again! I’m going to be posting these with a little more frequency. I’m a little ahead in my watch order, so I’m writing these entries a little behind where I am watching, but it’s almost a week until Christmas and I have a fair amount of Christmas Carols to watch!
I’ll be covering three adaptations in this post, as one of them is only 8 minutes long!
A Christmas Carol (1971 Animated Short Film)
This version was originally created as a television special. It won enough critical acclaim that it was released in theaters and it was then nominated for, and then won, the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1972. Some argued that it should not have been eligible since it was originally made for TV and the rules for Academy qualification were changed afterward to disallow made-for-TV films. It’s only 25 minutes in length and is available to watch on Youtube, which I’ve posted below:
The most striking thing about it to me is the animation style. It has a very sketch-like quality and was clearly done to resemble the illustrations of artist John Leech, which were included in original printings of A Christmas Carol, like the one seen below.
In an deliberate connection, the voice of Scrooge and Jacob Marley in this film are the same actors that played the roles in the live action version from 1951, Alastair Sim and Michael Hordern respectively.
The story starts with some opening credits, with “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”. A narrator introduces us to Scrooge and we are introduced to him in his place of business. We see Fred, the charity fellows, and his conversation with Bob.
It seems like I’m rushing the description, but everything is so extremely accurate, down to the exact dialogue for the most part, that there’s not much for me to add! The narrator describes Scrooge’s lack of connection to humanity and we see a visualization of how even the dog of a blind man knew to avoid Scrooge (a nice detail mentioned in the book). Scrooge makes his way home and we see his door knocker slowly transform into the face of Marley (Finally animation gets put to good use!) As Scrooge makes his way up his stairs, we see a phantom hearse make its way up, but much more subtly than the previous movie that did this.
These scenes of Scrooge in the dark feature some really cool abstract shading and really drive home the eeriness of the situation. As Scrooge settles in, Marley’s ghost appears and gives him the spiel. When Scrooge accuses him of being a hallucination, Marley pulls off his bandage and his jaw creepily drops to an unnatural length as he screams, a very cool and creepy detail from the story that we finally get to see in film! He also tells Scrooge that the Spirits will come each separate day, rather than in one night, another detail that usually gets changed and we see the dozens of spirits trying in vain to help the woman outside the window with her infant.
Scrooge awakens to the Ghost of Christmas Present, which is very close to how it is described in the story. Dickens describes it with the following:
“Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever.”
This version the light coming out of its head, appears both old and young, and changes between having multiple limbs. Something extremely hard to do in live action and difficult even to do in animation, but they went above and beyond with the detail!
The Spirit takes Scrooge to see himself in school and also for the first time we see Scrooge imagining his literary characters as the only ones to keep him company, but alas, we skip over Fan and go straight to Fezziwig’s, but with a neat flipbook style animation of Scrooge aging. The Spirit takes him further to his breakup with Belle. Just like in the novella, Scrooge seizes the Spirit’s cap and puts out the light in order to rid himself of it.
The Ghost of Christmas Spirit appears a robed giant, and he takes Scrooge out and uses his torch to drop cheer on some city folk. He takes Scrooge to the Cratchit’s house where he sees and asks about Tiny Tim. The Spirit then takes him to the mine, the lighthouse, and the ship, with some really neat shifting perspective animations. Each of the locations has someone singing and celebrating Christmas. They fly back to London and we briefly see Fred’s party where he offers his Uncle Scrooge a toast.
Scrooge notices something under the spirit’s robe and he introduces Ignorance and Want, who are drawn as almost Gollum-like figures.
The Ghost of Christmas Future arrives as a black-robed specter. He takes Scrooge to the businessmen mocking the funeral, to Old Joe’s, and to his body in his bed. He asks for tenderness connected to death and we see Bob Cratchit mourning Tiny Tim, and then Scrooge is taken to his own grave.
He awakens, goes to the window, pays a boy to get the turkey and heads into town. He gives his back payments to the charity guy and dines with Fred. Finally, we see him play his prank on Bob by raising his salary the next morning.
As far as accuracy goes, this is absolutely the closest to perfection I have seen so far. There are a few scenes that are missing. We don’t see Fan, Fred’s party is just the toast without any of the games, we don’t see Belle and her husband or the couple who are happy that Scrooge is dead, but in my opinion, Fan is the only notable exception. The fact that they fit everything else in, including “obscure” scenes like the lighthouse, mine, ship, and Ignorance and Want, including almost down-to-the-exact-word accurate dialogue is amazing in my opinion. With only Mr. Magoo to compare in terms of animated versions, there is not even a comparison to be made, this one blows it out of the water. All of that coupled with really unique and beautiful animation, it definitely earned its Academy Award.
However, if I have to nitpick, I’m not a huge fan of Alastair Sim in this one. In his live action film, I wasn’t a big fan of his “mean” Scrooge, but his physical performance and his reactions to the Spirits sold the rest of the movie for me. But his voice performance throughout all of this fell kind of flat for me. I’m not sure if it was a lack of experience with voice acting or if it was because he was around 70 years old at the point this was recorded, but I just didn’t think he sold the story.
I wholeheartedly recommend this version for its accuracy and visuals alone. It’s a quick watch, but so far, the closest you can get to just purely watching the book come to life.
Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol (1979)
My original list has “The Stingiest Man in Town” a Rankin-Bass animated film (the same studio that made Rudolph, Frosty, and the animated version of the Hobbit). However, it’s not available for streaming anywhere and it’s even somewhat hard to get on physical media, so I had to move on!
Bug’s Bunny’s Christmas Carol is an 8-minute long animated short that was part of a Bugs Bunney’s Looney Tunes Christmas Tales TV special.
This adaptation is rather loose and really is more of a typical Looney Tunes cartoon with a Christmas Carol theme.
We’re introduced to Scrooge, who is portrayed by Yosemite Sam, counting his money and letting his poor clerk Bob Cratchit (portrayed by Porky Pig) freeze due to a lack of coal. Bugs Bunny shows up as Fred and tries to get Scrooge in the Christmas spirit by giving him a comical kiss and bringing some carolers inside, but they are all kicked out by Scrooge, who fires Cratchit.
Bugs goes to his Cratchits house, where we see Petunia Pig as Mrs. Cratchit and in a pretty good gag, Tweety Bird as Tiny Tim, where Bugs notes “Puny, ain’t he?” In another decent gag, a man from the “Light Company” shows up as the Cratchit’s can’t afford to light the house and he simply walks out with their only remaining candle. He also notes that their house is being repossessed by Scrooge. Bugs decides that “Of course you know, this means war.”
Bugs sends more carolers to Scrooge, who falls into snow when he tries to tell them off (“Ain’t I a Dickens?”, Bugs quips). He puts freezing snow in Scrooge’s warm bath and finally dresses up as a ghost complete with chains and sneaks into Scrooge’s bedroom to tell Scrooge that he’s there on account of the guy who wears red. Scrooge asks if it is Santa, but Bugs suggests it’s “the other guy who wears red”. Scrooge repents and says he’ll change and he runs throughout the town giving away his riches and he gives Bob his job back, with Bugs planting another smooch onto Scrooge in celebration.
I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a Looney Tunes snob. I absolutely love some of the classic shorts, anything that Chuck Jones did like “One Froggy Evening”, “Duck Amuck”, or “What’s Opera, Doc?” are some of the greatest animated shorts ever made. Unfortunately, this short falls into the era where I feel that Looney Tunes went into a large decline. After the mid 1960s, the traditional Warner Bros. Animation studio shut down and DePatie-Freleng enterprises began producing Looney Tunes cartoons. I remember as a kid when Nickelodeon aired Looney Tunes re-runs, if a cartoon started with that different opening, I knew it would not be as good. The animation looks significantly cheaper in this era and unfortunately that’s when this short was released. The premise is there for great jokes, but everything feels a little un-related to the actual story of a Christmas Carol. They could have used the Past, Present, and Future spirits for a lot of great gags, but the whole premise is underutilized. Nothing against Yosemite Sam, but a lot of Chuck Jones’ cartoons featured Daffy Duck as a greedy jerk and I feel like he would bounce off both Bugs and Porky better than Yosemite Sam does. Overall, as both a Christmas Carol and Looney Tunes fan, this feels like a wasted effort. I hope “Bah HumDuck” from 2006 turns out better!
An American Christmas Carol (1979)
I’m not going to bother posting a scene by scene synopsis of this one, as it does not really try to be an accurate re-telling of the original story. Instead, it’s a complete reimagining of the story, where instead of Victorian era England, it takes place in the Great Depression in America. 1933 in Concord, New Hampshire to be exact. When I thought about where I would place an American version of a Christmas Carol, I came to the same conclusion. The Great Depression was a time period of great hardship for the average family and it seems like a perfect fit for the story of the Cratchits.
The film stars Henry Winkler (who most will know as Fonzie from Happy Days) as Benedict Slade, this version’s Scrooge equivalent. He works a similar job of money lending that Scrooge does, but the story begins with him repossessing a number of people’s possessions who cannot pay him back (including taking a first edition copy of “A Christmas Carol” from a book store). His assistant with the last name of Thatcher (our Bob Cratchit stand-in) tries to talk him into re-opening the local quarry to bring jobs back to the town, but he shoots him down and fires him for it.
He’s visited by the ghost of his business partner (no chains, no see through body, kinda boring) and is said he’ll be visited by three spirits. The spirits are past, present, and future, but in another bout of uncreativity, they just look like the people whose things he repossessed, without any spectral flair or anything.
We learn that he was an orphan. He was adopted by a nice man who wanted to pick a child with behavioral problems because they really needed a good home. He apprenticed him in his factory, he falls in love with his daughter, Helen (our Belle equivalent). Benedict wants to modernize the factory, but is told quality is more important. He is obsessed with success and ends up leaving Helen and her family to make it on his own.
The Spirit of Christmas present shows him the effect that firing Thatcher has had, particularly on his sickly son, Jonathan (Tiny Tim). Slade feels bad about it, as he didn’t know anything about Thatcher’s home life.
The Spirit of Christmas Future shows up (with an interesting idea where Slade’s radio starts playing some modern music and this ghost is at least dressed like someone from the 70s to give a little bit of difference to the drab setting).
The Spirit shows Slade an auction of all of the things he has aquired and he is disturbed that no one values them save for someone who finally bids on a painting of him, only to burn it in celebration with the rest of the bidders. He’s disturbed and asks to be taken somewhere peaceful. He is taken to Jonathan’s grave and then his own.
He awakens a changed man. He rehires Thatcher, takes the people’s possessions back, makes plans to reopen the quarry, and purchases a number of expensive trip tickets for Jonathan to travel for treatment of his illness. The film ends with him visiting the orphanage and taking a similar child to him under his wing in the way that his adoptive father did for him.
This one turned out to be a pretty big disappointment for me. The first issue being, while it follows the skeleton outline of A Christmas Carol, it has VERY little to do with Christmas. Slade makes very few references to not enjoying Christmas and the actual celebration of it is barely touched upon until the end when he gives presents to the Thatchers. A lot of the “past” scenes are so all over the place, that it’s impossible to believe that ALL of them are technically “Christmas Pasts” and not just random days from his life. I understand that the crux of the story is changing your way of thinking and finding empathy and care, but it feels a little wrong to call this movie a “Christmas Carol”.
None of the acting is particularly special. I like Henry Winkler, particularly in comedies like Arrested Development and Parks and Recreation, but I don’t think he’s a good fit in this role. He was only 34 when they filmed it, so they used aging makeup to make him appear old, but while I respect the effort, it does not look great. He looks like a combination of Miracle Max from the Princess Bride and what Spike Jonze looks like when he wears the old lady makeup in the grandpa sketches in Jackass. He never actually seems like an old man, just a younger person impersonating one. I understand that doing things this way allowed him to play his younger self for the past segments, but much like Albert Finney in Scrooge, it becomes a little too cartoonish when trying to play someone older.
I can’t say that I would recommend this one, unless maybe you like Hallmark movies, as that is what it reminded me of. It does not really make for a good “Christmas”-themed film.
Next on my list, some of the versions I’m most looking forward to! Mickey’s Christmas Carol, the 1984 version starring George C Scott, and Scrooged with Bill Murray!
Thanks for reading and have a merry Christmas!
