Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly, miserly businessman, has no time for sentimentality and largely views Christmas as a waste of time. However, this Christmas Eve he will be visited by three ... Read allEbenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly, miserly businessman, has no time for sentimentality and largely views Christmas as a waste of time. However, this Christmas Eve he will be visited by three spirits who will show him the errors of his ways.Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly, miserly businessman, has no time for sentimentality and largely views Christmas as a waste of time. However, this Christmas Eve he will be visited by three spirits who will show him the errors of his ways.
- Director
- Writers
- Charles Dickens(adapted from "A Christmas Carol")
- Noel Langley(adaptation and screenplay)
- Stars
- Director
- Writers
- Charles Dickens(adapted from "A Christmas Carol")
- Noel Langley(adaptation and screenplay)
- Stars
Videos1
- Spirit of Christmas Presentas Spirit of Christmas Present
- (as Francis de Wolff)
- Director
- Writers
- Charles Dickens(adapted from "A Christmas Carol")
- Noel Langley(adaptation and screenplay) (screenplay)
- All cast & crew
- See more cast details at IMDbPro
Storyline
- Taglines
- Now! The story that has brought joy to millions! A new screen triumph!
- Genres
- Certificate
- K-8
- Parents guide
Did you know
- TriviaThe word "humbug" provides insight into Ebenezer Scrooge's hatred of Christmas, as it describes deceitful efforts to fool people by pretending to a fake loftiness or false sincerity. Therefore, when Scrooge calls Christmas a humbug, he is claiming that people only pretend to be charitable and kind in an effort to delude him, each other, and themselves. In Scrooge's eyes, he is the one man who is honest enough to admit that no one really cares about anyone else, so (to him) every wish for a Merry Christmas is one more deceitful effort to fool him and take advantage of him. This is a man who has turned to profit because he honestly believes everyone else will someday betray him or abandon him the moment he trusts them.
- GoofsAfter Mrs. Dilber has arrived in Scrooge's rooms on Christmas morning, in two clips when Scrooge is looking at himself in a mirror, a member of the crew is also seen reflected in the lower left corner of the mirror. The first clip begins just before Mrs. Dilber says, "Are you quite yourself, sir?" The second begins just before Scrooge says, "Merry Christmas, Ebenezer! You old humbug!"
- Quotes
Spirit of Christmas Present: My time with you is at an end, Ebenezer Scrooge. Will you profit from what I've shown you of the good in most men's hearts?
Ebenezer: I don't know, how can I promise!
Spirit of Christmas Present: If it's too hard a lesson for you to learn, then learn this lesson!
[opens his robe, revealing two starving children]
Ebenezer: [shocked] Spirit, are these yours?
Spirit of Christmas Present: They are Man's. This boy is Ignorance, this girl is Want. Beware them both, but most of all, beware this boy!
Ebenezer: But have they no refuge, no resource?
Spirit of Christmas Present: [quoting Scrooge] Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
- Alternate versionsSome home video releases "trim" just a few seconds off the opening.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Play for Today: Another Flip for Dominick (1982)
- SoundtracksHark! the Herald Angels Sing
(pub. 1856) (uncredited)
Music by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1840)
Lyrics by Charles Wesley (1730)
Sung by offscreen chorus during opening credits
Reprised by a family in a Spirit of Christmas Present sequence
on this perfect picture, the definitive Scrooge of all time, which I
have watched, spellbound, every Christmas since I was three
years old and will continue to watch as long as I am breathing. I
endorse the review already placed here by "jackboot"; and I have
also been particularly touched by that small scene between
Scrooge and the maid, with not a word spoken, that "Seashell 1"
mentions. Two points I would like to underline here which I have
not seen mentioned by others: First, this is about the only
"Christmas Carol" movie that remembers to be a GHOST story as
well as a Christmas story. The superb camera work by Pennington-Richards and the powerful score by Richard Addinsell
help to make this movie rather scary in places, as it should be.
Nowhere else have I seen the grim bleakness of the grimier side
of Victorian London so immediately conveyed. The scene where
Marley's ghost is caught out in the snowstorm with a multitude of
other wailing spirits is truly horrifying; and there are many such
moments, such as the one where the Spirit of Christmas Present
suddenly reveals to us the personifications of Ignorance and
Want; they really scared me as a kid, and they should scare us all
as adults now. Secondly, and above all, I think that the reason why
Alastair Sim succeeds so brilliantly here in a role which has
defeated so many is that he was chiefly a COMIC actor. Ebenezer
Scrooge has from the beginning an underlying humor which
makes him human; by allowing it to come out he makes the
transformation plausible, by making you understand that this
humor was dormant in him all along, just waiting to be awakened.
It just isn't Christmas without Sim.
- jkogrady
- Dec 17, 2002
Details
Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $24
- Runtime
- 1h 26min
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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