A Christmas Carol
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A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s Christmas time again. All the signs are in the air; every commercial for the past four weeks has been barking out special offers and “holiday savings,” those of us in northern climes are shoveling our way through the first big snows of the season, and, if you’re old enough to be buying presents for others with your own money, that nervous guilt peculiar to the first three weeks of December is gripping your chest and forcing you to spend more time in the mall than any reasonable person should. A friend recently remarked that he was surprised I had Christmas spirit, which made me question- do I? I listen to Christmas CDs after Thanksgiving, I watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” every year, I own a stuffed Grinch doll; but I also generally despise the hustle and bustle of every shopping center, the cloying horror of children and their clutching, the hollow ring of third-rate animated specials where simply saying, “Merry Christmas” is a panacea to cover the ills of the previous 360 days.
Plus, I don’t believe in God. At least, not a Christian God. So what, precisely, am I celebrating here? There’s the usual reasons: I do it for the closeness to my family (none of whom are religious), for the fond memories I have from my childhood, from some vague sense of humanity and brotherhood. But plagued as I am with the capacity for too much thought, I sometimes wonder, is that enough? Do you reach a point in your life where you can no longer stay on the fence- where you either despise Christmas for all its shallow, capitalistic nihilism, or embrace it’s warm gooey Jesus-centric heart. Neither choice is particularly appealing to me, so on I waffle, a Hamlet in search of a ghost.
I don’t think I’m entirely alone in feeling this way; and this indecision may be one of the reasons that Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has endured. Scrooge is, in his way, the perfect example of both sides of the coin. And if he happens to land with one particular side face-up at the end, well, that doesn’t take away the memory of those opening pages- there’s a reason “Bah! Humbug!” is just as recognizable as “God bless us, everyone.”
Plus, there are ghosts. Everybody loves a good haunting. (Except, of course, the hauntee, but if you’re silly enough to move into a house with bleeding walls and bad lighting, your opinion isn’t going to hold much weight.)
I’m not going to bother with spoiler warnings- unless you count that in itself as a spoiler warning, in which case, there you go- and I’m not entirely sure that the usual plot summary is warranted here. I think I knew the basic gist of the thing before I was eight, and the particulars by the time I was ten; as one of the most popular tales told on one of the most prominent holidays of the year, it’s infested our culture to such an extent that you’d have to work very hard to avoid it. Seems like every children’s cartoon series ever made had an episode that riffed on the topic; my favorite was probably the “Real Ghostbusters” version, with Pete Venkman and the team stumbling into Scrooge’s bedroom and capturing Marley’s ghost.
But what the hell, a summary could give us some much needed focus, so: there’s this old bastard named Ebenezer Scrooge, a man who’s long ago lost all joy from his life and is spending the remainder of his days seeing that others have as little pleasure from their own joy as possible. He covets wealth above all things, pinching every penny and begrudging each expense, and it stands to reason that he would despise Christmas, devoted as it is to giving, more than any other day of the year. On a standard December 24th, he ridicules charities, snipes at his nephew’s well-wishes, and gripes about his clerk Bob Cratchit’s desire for a day off from work; then goes home to his empty, cold apartment, eats his gruel, and settles in for a presumably fitful night of sleep.
This particularly Eve, however, things go rather differently. Upon arriving home, Scrooge is confronted by the ghost of his seven year dead partner, Jacob Marley, a fearsome, pitiable specter ensconced in the chains of his lifetime of greed. Marley tells Scrooge of his awful afterlife, the eternity spent wandering the earth he should have wandered in life, able to see all the miseries and horrors of the world but unable to ease anyone’s suffering, most especially his own. Scrooge has a similar fate in store, but fate (or God, probably God) has decided to give him one last chance. Over the next three days, he is to be visited by three spirits, who will strive to show him the error of his ways so that he may somehow correct them.
The first spirit arrives at the stroke of one that very night, the Ghost of Christmas Past. And thus doth the flashbacking begin, with Scrooge being led upon a whirlwind tour of his own once happy past. This reconnection with the shadows of long ago begins a thawing in Scrooge’s heart. The thaw continues with the arrival of the Ghost of Christmas Present, who takes Scrooge to the happy homes, among others, of his clerk and his nephew as they and their families celebrate the holiday. Scrooge makes the acquaintance of Bob’s youngest boy, Tiny Tim, and learns that, unless something changes, Tim won’t be around to see another Christmas. This upsets Scrooge; when the Ghost throws some of the old miser’s earlier comments back at him, Scrooge becomes even more distraught.
The worst is yet to come, for the final spirit is more dreadful than the previous two combined: the Ghost of Christmas Future. Robed in black that hides its face, this spirit does not speak, but gestures Scrooge through a series of increasingly unpleasant scenes. We learn Tim has indeed died, and that the Cratchits are understandably upset about this. More puzzling (well, puzzling to a person who regularly gets hit by all the buses he doesn’t see coming) are the visions of thieves and businessmen alike commenting on the recent demise of some poor, unloved fool, whose bed-things were stolen while his corpse was still cooling and who can’t inspire a single mourner to his funeral unless free food is provided. Ultimately, the Ghost brings the increasingly desperate Scrooge to a cemetery, to reveal the grave of this unrepentant sinner, and of course, the name on the tombstone is Scrooge’s own.
Scrooge,terror-stricken, begs the spirit for a chance to make right his wrongs, and in the process of pleading, winds up struggling with the sheets of his own bed. He’s back in his bedroom, and it’s Christmas day- the spirits did it all in one night, giving him the chance to redeem himself on that most redeemable of days. Half-mad with joy, Scrooge sets about rejoining the throngs of mankind that he had so aggressively avoided.
It’s difficult, once a story becomes engrained, to try and remember if it ever surprised you, especially if you first saw it when you were very young. I’ve seen The Empire Strikes Back a dozen times, but I’m not sure if I ever took the climactic revelation as anything other than an inevitability. It’s even more uncertain here; was there ever a doubt in my mind that Scrooge wouldn’t be saved? Was there ever a point in my life where I wasn’t certain the name on the tombstone would be Scrooge’s? Probably not. I think, when we’re young, the stories we learn are swallowed whole, without reservation or concern for such subtleties as foreshadowing, as though plots were simply things to be taken as they were and our own reactions limited to joy and horror.
My point being, it’s bloody difficult to review a novella when the first time you read it is like the thirtieth.
Perhaps the initial thing you notice about A Christmas Carol, even before you open it, is just how short it is; my copy runs 68 pages, and even with some liberal spacing and footnotes, it’s doubtful you could stretch it to a hundred. Which may not seem odd, but when anyone mentions anything by Charles Dickens, you assume it’s a full-length novel, as all of his other famous works are; plus, no one ever refers to Carol as a novella. The short length means that there’s a good chance most of what’s in there has made its way to one adaptation or another- upon reading it, we’re not going to discover the missing thirty page subplot on Bob’s daughter Martha getting attacked at her job or Scrooge’s nephew losing his sixpence at the races. This means even the slightest of changes from what you know will seem glaring, and that appeals to the anal-retentive part of my brain.
It’s Dickens, so the writing is good. Say what you will about his tendency towards sentimentality, his basic prose work is distinctive and a pleasure to read. He has a tendency to digression on some occasion, which could be considered distracting, but I think it’s an effective way to lull a reader into a story. And, being English, he has that wonderful knack for using the right words in the right places, a talent that seems to escape a disturbing number of writers even to this day.
The character stuff, on the other hand… There’s a lot of goodwill in this book. Christmas cheer seems to suffuse every page, and your enjoyment of the tale as a whole depends a good deal on how able you are to appreciate that cheer without getting too cynical about its realism. Dickens is well-known for getting soft-headed in his depictions of positive characters, some of whom are well-nigh unbearable to read, but for the most part, A Christmas Carol is inoffensive in this regard. The various descriptions of seasonal merry-making are evocative largely for their details, with long lists of foods and games, many of which I’ve never heard of before but still sound delicious and delightful, respectively.
Scrooge’s nephew is fairly one-note, but his unflagging cheeriness is sort of endearing; it would probably be annoying to hang out with him for any extended period of time, but you can understand Scrooge’s eventual desire to join him in merrymaking at that most festive time of year. The Cratchits are more troublesome, in particular that most saintly of youngsters, the alliteratively titled Tiny Tim. Tim doesn’t say a whole lot, but what he does say has a syrupy awfulness that makes you wonder if he didn’t grow up to write greeting cards. One example, related by his father, is particularly telling:
‘And how did little Tim behave? asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content.
‘As good as gold,’ said Bob, ‘and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.’
Oh come on.
Still, all of this is a good deal less toxic than much of Dickens longer work, and never really rises above the eye-rolling level of irritation. I can sympathize with a reader who is driven away from the story by all the smiles, but here’s where being overly-familiar with what you’re reading actual works in your favor; I’m so used to Tiny Tim being accepted as a paragon of virtue, and not a one-dimensional, mawkish twerp, that his infrequent platitudes are relatively easy to swallow.
The most compelling of all the characters is, of course, Ebenezer Scrooge himself, and I was surprised to at just how little we really know about him by the end. He seems less a person and more a cipher for whatever particular emotion the narrative requires. He’s gruff and bitter at the start, guilt-ridden and thawing for the first two ghosts, terror-stricken for the third, and gleefully repentant at the tale’s conclusion. Which is all well and good, and his responses to the hauntings and his ultimate turn-around make sense, but we never really know why he’s as bitter as he is at the beginning. There are hints in his past; his father was apparently fairly cold and Scrooge spent a few Christmases alone at school, until his kind-hearted younger sister (mother of Scrooge’s nephew) manages to change the old man’s mind and Scrooge gets to go home. But then Fan, the sister, dies, so perhaps the loss of such a positive influence on his life made his descent into wretchedness all the easier.
We don’t really know, though. We seem him reveling at a Christmas thrown by his first boss, Fezziwig, and he seems like any other young man, then we jump ahead in time to see his fiancé dumping him because his love of money has taken over his love for her, and we have no idea when or why the change happened. The intent, I assume, is to present Scrooge’s descent as one so subtle that every individual choice that sped him along its course was innocuous and logical. This makes sense, as it allows us to identify with Scrooge more readily, but his miserly countenance is so specific, so thoroughly realized, that you can’t help but wish that his past was more specific as well. The hints of an abusive home life and extreme loneliness- there’s a terrific bit where Scrooge watches his younger self reading in an empty class room, and the characters from the book he’s reading take form briefly outside the window- help, but everything else just seems so generic. Why did Scrooge become so obsessed with money? Why did he shut himself away from the world?
These are quibbles, and it’s doubtful that many people leave a A Christmas Carol yearning for a bit more back-story. Overall, I think it’s safe to say that this is a successful bit of work that has managed to survive through the years on its own merit as well as its convenient seasonal timing. There’s a lot of humor here, as is to be expected in anything by Dickens, and while his characters’ sincerity may occasional ring flat, his commitment to their ideals never does.
SCREEN:
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Scrooge, directed by Brian Desmond Hurst
There’ve been at least half a dozen adaptations of A Christmas Carol since the novel was first published, and if you look up reviews of them online, nearly every review has the phrase “the essential Carol adaptation” in it; one can only conclude that the original story is strong enough to withstand the various trials and tribulations of headstrong screenwriters and directors desperate to put their mark on a holiday chestnut. Or that every critic managed to get through only one movie apiece before getting wasted on egg-nog and giving up entirely.
Either way, I watched Scrooge with as reasonable expectations as I could muster. I expected it would be well made- it was- and I expected Tiny Tim to be boring- he was- and I expected that I wouldn’t be particularly surprised by anything- and I was a bit off on this. Most surprising was that regardless of expectation, I was moved at the end, even a little giddy, and there were moments were it almost seemed as though I was seeing the whole predictable story for the first time. Part of that is the introduction of some new material, which I’ll talk about more below, but just as important is the enthusiasm that all involved brought to the project, and especially the expert handling of the titular role by Alistair Sim.
When you watch a performance of A Christmas Carol either on stage, screen, or television, unless you’re entirely unfamiliar with the tale, you watch for two primary reasons: to see how the Spirits are handled, and to see how good the guy playing Scrooge is. When it comes to the Spirits, you’re mostly looking to see that the usual beats are hit, that we see Scrooge as a lonely boy, Scrooge getting dumped, the Cratchits being poor, and Scrooge being dead. There’s usually some variation on these, but once you seen enough of the interpretations, the Spirits become a tad bit on the predictable side. Christmas Future is Death? Oh, that’s just so remarkable, I had no idea a production could dare be so bold.
Which leaves one to focus all the more on what sort of job the lead actor does. This job is separated into two basic sections: is he a convincing bastard in the beginning? And has he really changed by the end? While Scrooge is around for the middle section, his comments tend to be of the “Show me no more, Spirit!” variety; the real meat of the performance is how the actor starts out, and how ends up.
No other way to say it: Sim nails it. He’s a large part of why the movie is as beloved as it is (and while every version of A Christmas Carol has some adherents, I think this one wins out by sheer numbers), and while I haven’t seen every Scrooge out there, of what I have seen, Sim is definitely the best. Of course, he does had the help of not being an actor I’m overly familiar with. Most modern retellings get a “name” to play Scrooge, like Michael Caine or Patrick Stewart or Albert Finney, and while these men give terrific performances, admiring their work involves stepping outside of whatever movie they’re in- you think to yourself, “Hey, Caine is very convincing!” and all of a sudden you’re remembering who Michael Caine is, so you start thinking about Jaws: the Revenge and wondering if he got paid a lot, or if he was just really drunk when he signed on the movie, and man, Lorraine Gray looked pretty terrible, maybe she was drunk too-
You get my point; it’s not that I don’t enjoy watching well-known actors in familiar roles, but when it comes to really savoring the story, an extremely talented unknown has something of an edge. Which isn’t to say Sim could considered an “unknown” by any stretch, but he is an actor who I don’t know a whole lot about, and seeing him on screen didn’t immediately remind me of the forty nine other movies he did. (The only one of those other movies I know I’ve see was The Ruling Class, and I don’t remember that one so well.)
This wouldn’t matter, though, if Sim didn’t do a great job with the role, and he does. He’s a trifle more subdued than other Scrooges I’ve seen, which works to great effect; in the opening scenes, while he’s mean and miserly and cruel, he never seems like a ogre, just a man who’s every kindly instinct has shriveled inward and become rotten. He’s a monster, but definitely a human one, and the smug pleasure he takes in crushing the goodwill of others is all too believable.
His interactions with the Spirits are a fine mixture of horror and delight, and it’s marvelous to see his decency and joy in life being gradually restored. This comes to its fruition at the story’s climax, when Scrooge comes back to himself after pleading with the Ghost of Christmas Future to spare him; his irrepressible delight in not only surviving, but being brought back in time in order to right his wrongs, is infectious. He seems near madness, but unlike some other Scrooges, you never feel as though this madness is more powerful than the joy- it’s just the giddy rush of a man seeing the sun for the first time after decades of miserable rain.
So, Sim is excellent. The rest of the cast is excellent as well, if, necessarily, not quite as impressive. The Cratchits are their predictably cheery-in-the-face-of-ultimate-despair selves, the nephew is upbeat, the ghosts are mysterious and- occasionally- creepy. And yes, Tiny Tim is the sweet-natured cripple we know and um, know.
When I decided to do this review (oh so long ago), while I knew I would be reading Dickens’ novella, I wasn’t sure what movie I’d be reviewing, so I asked around at work, and this is the version that immediately came up; my boss, apart from lauding Sim’s performance, said she thought this was the best version because it was very “British.” And she’s right. The cast across the board is professional and convincing, the direction is, while fantastical at times, never ostentatious or showy, and the sets are expertly authentic. That’s the key word here: authenticity. The occasional slang in the dialogue, the performers’ accents, the costumes they wear and the environs they perform in are entirely authentically, giving the movie a realism that helps to ground its more outré moments.
In short, you can’t do better than Alistair Sim’s Scrooge, and you can definitely do far worse.
COMPARE/CONTRAST:
Well, this should be a lark.
One of the reasons Scrooge (for the curious- most DVD/VHS releases of this movie change its title to the more straightforward A Christmas Carol; I’m just sticking with the title we see in the film’s opening credits) works as well as it does is because its adapters stay very close to their source. The dialogue is excellent; three-quarters of it is straight from Dickens pen, including a good deal of the wit. Even those scenes which aren’t from the original text manage the neat trick of sounding like they should’ve been. Instead of trying to take a beloved classic and reinterpret it to give it some modern edge, the filmmakers here are clearly determined to be as true to Dickens’ intent as they possibly can; while I believe a well-done reinterpretation can bring new life to an old tale, a faithful attempt to honor what’s been proven effective, especially in the context of a classic as beloved as this one, is just as strong a choice.
The changes are mostly along the lines of giving the character of Scrooge some more depth, in the form of additional lines and whole scenes. The bulk of these scenes are in the Christmas Past segment, which makes sense; you don’t need much more time in the beginning to establish Scrooge is a miser, and you don’t need more time once he’s reformed. Also, the only Scrooge you see with the final two ghosts is the reforming miser, so if you plan on fleshing out the character, your best bet is to add in some more flashbacks.
Which is what happens here. We start with the usual scene in Scrooge’s old school-house, with his sister Fan arriving to take him home. This is the same as in the novella, but there is additional dialogue between Fan and Scrooge emphasizing just how important Fan is in his life; also new is when the spirit mentions that the reason Scrooge’s father disliked him was that Scrooge’s mother died giving birth to him- and that one day, Fan would die giving birth to Scrooge’s nephew. Neither of these facts are in the novella, but they make sense, enough sense that I had to go back to the story just to make sure I was right, despite having read only a day or so before.
More additions follow. We get to see Scrooge and his lost love Alice before she was lost, and watch Scrooge proposing and promising her all the riches in the world; we watch as Fezziwig rejects a proposal from another businessman on apparent moral grounds (in a scene that reminded me, oddly enough, of The Godfather), and then see that businessman invite Scrooge to work for him. Scrooge does, and in a nifty bit, we watch him meet the young Jacob Marley, played by Patrick Macnee in his screen debut. Fan dies, and we watch Scrooge overcome at her passing; he leaves the room enraged before she can speak her final wish that he watch over her son. Fezziwig is ruined, and Scrooge and Marley take up shop in his old offices; we see the Sim Scrooge (younger than the “modern” one, but getting older) and Marley use the embezzlement of their boss to increase their own position and wealth; and finally, we see the night of Marley’s passing, with Scrooge arriving just in time- purely by luck, as he refused to close up early- to hear Marley’s confused last message, that’s there’s more to life than money. Scrooge, of course, ignores this.
The ultimate effect of all this new material is to give us a richer understanding of the story’s protagonist, making his fall into spiritual ruin more tragic and his ultimate redemption all the more wonderful. The only other major addition along these lines is a scene with the Ghost of Christmas Present, where we (and Scrooge) find out what happened to his ex-fiancé. Alice now tends to the poor and destitute, and has acquired an almost saintly air. Obviously intended as a reminder of just how much Scrooge was wasted his life, I’m not sure that it’s particularly necessary; but then, since Alice’s role is slightly expanded in the film, I suppose it’s only fair to show where she ends up.
There is also a change in Scrooge’s reactions to the spirits. In the novella, he’s started to change his ways by the Ghost of Christmas Present, so much so that the Ghost of Christmas Future is almost an act of unnecessary sadism. In the movie, while Scrooge is obviously affected by what he’s seeing, he keeps saying, “I’m too old to change!” and keeps begging to be left alone, which creates some tension, and turns the last spirit from a “Get it?!? GET IT?!?” moment to a much needed brutal wake-up call, telling the already shaken and distraught Scrooge that either he learns to change, or he’ll lose everything.
As for omissions, there aren’t any, really. We don’t see the Ghost of Christmas Present taking Scrooge to see a lighthouse keeper enjoying Christmas, and a ship’s crew doing the same asea, but we do see the coal mining family by the fire, which is more than most interpretations give us. Everyone who knows the story is familiar with the implacable, mute Ghost of Christmas Future, but I was surprised to find that, in the novella, Scrooge’s pleas do make him waver at the moment, just near the end- there’s no wavering in the movie, and I’m certain I’ve never seen any wavering in any other version I’ve seen. There are a few more things I’m certain I’m forgetting, but nothing too profound; and besides, it’s such a short little novella, you might behoove yourself to take a look on your own.
I commented at the start of this review on what I feel to be the dual-natured aspect of Christmas (or the whole holiday season, if you like), and while I certainly haven’t reached a satisfactory conclusion in these scant pages, I do believe I’ve achieved a truce. Christmas is, in many ways, a crass, absurdist, capitalist fantasy, a nightmare of tacky sentiment and wrenching greed; but there was a time in my life where this wasn’t true, and that I am pleasantly reminded of this time whenever December rolls around, despite whatever unhappiness I may be entangled in, is something to be treasured. It’s this treasuring that Scrooge finally discovers the value of- the way the holidays, if you’re lucky, provide you with an opportunity to reaffirm what is best in life. That it can be a terribly ugly and grim time of year, I have no doubt. Bust if I choose to extend some holiday cheer your way, please take it in the spirit that it was intended; free from punditry and restrictions, with no particular philosophy attached, beyond the simple hope that a little kindness might make the darkness just that much easier to bear.
Oh, and you should see this movie if you get the chance. It left me grinning.
SOURCE: QQQQ
SCREEN: QQQQ
Fun Fact: Not once does Alistair Sim say, “Bah! Humbug!” At least, not in this movie.