Scrooge (1970)

Review Essay

In gearing up to create Film for the Holidays, one of the things I resolved to do early on was to spread out and cover at least one film from every decade in the “talkie” film era if I could.  This is a simple enough task for every decade but one: the 1970s are an extraordinarily holiday-free zone.  I couldn’t tell you if it was the oil crisis or stagflation or the Watergate scandal, etc., but something seems to have knocked the holiday spirit right out of Western filmmaking.  Take a gander at Wikipedia’s list of Christmas films (and I sure wish you would: goodness knows I’ve spent enough time there in the last year) and you’ll find that the list of theatrical releases amounts to a handful of horror movies, a Norwegian fairy tale classic that’s basically unavailable outside Norway, and a Santa Claus bank heist filmed in Canada (okay, that one sounds pretty interesting to me).  I’ll admit, 1970s TV movies do try to fill in that gap a bit, but still, I was trying to stick mostly to theatrical releases here and I was feeling stuck, until I remembered that Scrooge was released in 1970: I’ve always been fascinated by this particular version of A Christmas Carol, and I’m delighted to get the chance to unpack both what I think it does really wonderfully and what I think it really fumbles.

First, let’s give Scrooge credit for some things it gets very right: A Christmas Carol is a ghost story.  Much of the time, though, the ghost experiences are more thrilling than they are chilling, and while I enjoy those versions, I really admire Bricusse and company leaning into the creepiness of this story.  From opening titles that carry a sort of eerie Edward Gorey quality to the (mostly invented for this version) sequence in which Jacob Marley flies Ebenezer through the ghostly skies above London to the (totally invented for this version) plummet of Scrooge into literal Hell at the end of the Yet to Come experience, this movie often achieves something at least uncomfortable if not unsettling.  And yet another thing this version gets right is an investment in joyful characters — the Cratchit children, in particular, get more of the spotlight here (thanks in part to the early segment in which they accompany their cheerily elfin father through the streets of London doing last minute Christmas shopping).  I like the sweetness of the moments we get with the Cratchits, and I think the film at least sometimes accomplishes something really moving by juxtaposing such light-heartedness with the sort of nightmarish threat that lurks in Scrooge’s experiences.  Also, while the casting of Albert Finney as Scrooge is more than a little strange — at 34, surely he’s about the youngest actor to play Scrooge in any production outside of a high school or collegiate setting — I’ll get to my larger assessment of him in a later section.  Here in my list of the film’s strengths, I do just want to note that Finney’s undeniably talented and energetic, and I think he’s giving this character a lot of spark and liveliness, which is very watchably compelling in a number of scenes.

The film does a lot to displace Scrooge’s experiences into more cinematic spaces, and I’m not sure that always works: seeing him bedevil debtors in the streets does drive home his malice, but it also creates scenes that just don’t feel as true to the original novella, to me.  I can’t imagine men collecting for charity chasing an elderly man down the sidewalks after he’s turned them down; I also can’t really follow what we’re supposed to understand about his relationship to these scamp urchins who taunt him in the streets.  While we sympathize with them, I expect, they’re also not really winningly kind or charming themselves, and the movie doesn’t develop them as characters enough to clarify why they’re getting so much screen time.  Later in the movie, Christmas Past shows him this lush springtime picnic with Isabel Fezziwig (since in this version it’s the boss’s daughter he falls for), and while it’s a compelling visual, it also makes no sense to me at all: isn’t the logic of the ghosts that they only have access to Christmas Days, those past, those yet to come, or the one we’re experiencing at present?  It sort of felt like they wanted to broaden the landscape for Finney to inhabit, but again, I just don’t think it adds more than it detracts from the immersion.

And I’ve been putting off saying this, but it really has to be acknowledged: this is one of the least hummable musicals I’ve ever encountered.  I have seen Scrooge at least five times in my life, probably more than that, and yet if asked to sing more than a line of any of its songs, I think there’s only one of them that sticks (I’ll get to it in a moment).  I’m not sure what Bricusse, who has a track record of writing some very memorable songs, was thinking with numbers like “I Hate People” and “December the 25th”, but they rarely manage to get beyond serviceable melodic moments that are far too easily forgotten.  The one really successful song, which includes a full-energy dance choreography through the streets of London, is ”Thank You Very Much”, but even that song fits so strangely into the story — the song, in which Scrooge joins with lusty enthusiasm, is actually being sung by Scrooge’s many debtors after his death, “thanking” him for dying and setting them free from his oppressive control.  Scrooge, though, totally ignorant of what the song is about, treats the whole number as a delightful lark, maybe even as a chance to revel in the feeling that he can start to envision himself thanking people openly?  It’s a strange scene, where we as an audience can appreciate the awful but profound irony of Scrooge gleefully capering amid the throng, loudly and unknowingly singing a song about how wonderful it is that he’s dead.  What a macabre film.  Anyway, when the most hummable, toe-tappable song in your musical is an ironic celebration of the main character’s death, I would argue that the musical probably missed a chance or two to connect, but there’s no accounting for taste, and I bet one of you loves this soundtrack: I wish I could agree, since I sure do love Bricusse’s other work.

Ultimately, I think this is the challenge Scrooge poses those of us who love A Christmas Carol — it’s a whole that’s somehow a bit less than the sum of its parts.  Conceptually, it seems like it could deliver the best Dickens has to give us, both in terms of dialing up the horror elements in the story and in terms of sweetening the sentimental moments with song.  But I’d argue that in fact it gets out of step with itself enough that often the points in the narrative that most need chills are lacking in them, and the most soaring musical phrases don’t sit very neatly on the story beats that ought to feel emotionally overwhelming.  I think my ultimate conclusion is that Bricusse simply wasn’t inspired by this material the way he was by Hugh Lofting’s characters, or Roald Dahl’s novel: whether it’s because Dickens’s story is too iconic, or perhaps just a fallow period for Bricusse between other, more engaging projects, he couldn’t get a hold of this one, and the resulting script and soundtrack feel like a first draft more than a final one.  I’m glad it exists, and I do return to it, hoping each time to get something I’m sure is in there somewhere — so far, though, I’ve always been wrong about that.

I Know That Face: Edith Evans, who here I feel isn’t really well cast or written as the Ghost of Christmas Past, is a central and to me successful figure as the rich old Miss Victoria Woodworth in Fitzwilly, which I’ll cover elsewhere here on the blog.  Also appearing in Fitzwilly (uncredited in that film as Mr. Cotty) is Laurence Naismith, who here is the giddily dancing Mr. Fezziwig.  And Geoffrey Bayldon, who in Scrooge plays the astonished Pringle, the owner of the toy shop Scrooge visits on Christmas Day, later plays Jacob Marley himself on the final episode of the British television series Hallelujah! — an episode entitled “A Goose for Mrs. Scratchitt” that, as far as I can understand it, loosely adapts A Christmas Carol.

Spirit of Christmas Carol Present: I do like that Scrooge sees ghosts abroad in London at the end of his Marley confrontation.  It’s much different in the book than it is here, of course, and to me that diminishes the success of its inclusion, but as I keep saying, I admire the ambition here of working more of that paranormal content into this adaptation.  And I am always enthusiastic when a Carol adaptation remembers to include Ebenezer’s sister coming to school to bring him home to a kinder Father; who, the ghost reminds us, is Fred’s mother.  I found a lot of the Christmas Past sequence in this version really flat (whether Evans was directed to be detached or whether the writing just wasn’t there for her, I don’t think her performance ultimately works), but the film’s calling attention to Scrooge’s painful upbringing, along with the feeling that there was joy to be had, and love too, in the family he’s distanced himself from, is an important elevation of a couple of lines in the novella that I find really significant.  Lastly, the confrontation we get between Scrooge and Isabel as she leaves him is really very close to the book, in terms of the dialogue itself — adaptations often don’t know how to wrap things up between the two of them, if they bother to do it at all, and I liked the commitment here to the original Dickens text.

Spirit of Christmas Carol Absent: There’s a fair amount missing in this version, in part because they wanted to develop the Cratchit family differently: as a result of that intention, Bob and Tim haven’t been to church prior to their coming home for Christmas Present, nor is there a Martha in the family, waiting to surprise her father.  As I noted, I do like the family dynamic we get, but there’s no denying they’ve gone well off the characters as Dickens presents them.  And the Yet to Come sequence is much altered, without the same scenes making him aware of a recent death — after all, if he knew more about the death, there’s no way he would sing along gaily and obliviously to “Thank You Very Much” — and the segment concludes with a totally original plummet to Hell along with some grisly conversation there.  Marley reappears at that point, to offer some pointed and stinging commentary back in Ebenezer’s direction.  As someone who’s seen plenty of Carol adaptations, I did find the novelty interesting, but I have to be honest: tonally, I just don’t think it works, and it muddies more than a little the arc that Scrooge is on by the film’s end.

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Christmas Carol Vibes (8.5/10): Without question, this film does a lot to capture the spirit of the original for long sequences, and its commitment to creating a visual spectacle of Victorian London certainly succeeds at times, but there are enough unusual departures here that, as more or less “straight” adaptations of A Christmas Carol go, this one’s a bit further from the mark.  If you want the Carol experience, this will certainly deliver a lot of what you’re looking for, but I doubt it’ll be The Christmas Carol for almost any viewer: if that’s you, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Actual Quality (7.5/10): It’s really hard to answer this, but I think that fundamentally this is an adaptation of A Christmas Carol that gains little and loses more than it gains in monkeying with the underlying narrative.  And on top of that, I think this is a musical that, purely as a musical, just doesn’t drop enough great songs into your ears as you take it in.  A not-musical-enough musical that’s also a not-christmas-carol-enough Christmas Carol…but it’s good enough that I keep going back to it hoping it’ll deliver on either or both fronts?  I don’t know — that feels like a film that got about ¾ of the way up the mountain, to me, and that’s where I’ll mark it.

Scrooge?

As Ebenezer Scrooges go, I found this portrayal to be a very affected performance, which often feels like it’s playing up his frailty and his unwillingness to be affected by anything other than booze.  Finney’s charismatic, but either the writing or acting damage things a little here, and honestly, I wonder if it’s not simply the fact that they’ve cast a man in his 30s to play an elderly miser?  Under the circumstances, perhaps either a caricature of outrageous frailty or else a doddering drunkard were the only ways he felt really comfortable playing a role twice his age.  Certainly Finney is a good actor in general, and I think in the late 1990s (with a stronger script) might have been an excellent Scrooge, but this particular intersection of performer and material doesn’t really land the plane, for me.

Supporting Cast?

I’d call the performances across the rest of the cast very uneven, personally — as already noted, I think the Cratchits really work, anchored by some fine performances from Bob and Tiny Tim, in particular.  But, also as already noted, the Ghost of Christmas Past feels to me like she doesn’t want to be there.  And, maybe most astonishingly, Jacob Marley as performed by Alec Guinness is so incredibly bizarre, it’s hard to pay attention to the script.  Guinness uses these strange, inhuman gestures in a portrayal so outlandish and attention-grabbing, I was most reminded of John Cleese as the conjurer “Tim” in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  I’ll grant him this: he presents a Marley who would freak almost anybody out, but it ends up being distracting (and, with apologies to Sir Alec, if you’re casting for a role in a musical, you need an actor who can sing, and to my ears that is not true of Guinness).  It’s harder to judge Tom Jenkins and some of the other minor roles that don’t appear in other adaptations since they’re invented here, but I do think most of those go fairly well.

Recommended Frequency? For me, as I’ve noted, it’s a once in a while choice — this definitely isn’t in my top two or three Christmas Carols, and a person only has time for so many of them in any given December.  But there are undeniably good things about this version, and some undeniably singular elements in it: when I do revisit it, I can invest myself in enjoying these things, or at least appraising them thoughtfully enough that I think the movie was worth my time.  If you’ve not seen it in the last decade, you should give it a whirl sometime.