I hesitate to add to the avalanche of praise bestowed, on this site,
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.
