Review: "A Christmas Carol" with George C. Scott is the Definitive Adaptation
Movie of the Week #23 wishes you all a very merry Christmas
Merry Christmas, and welcome to Movie of the Week, a Wednesday column where we take a look back at a classic, obscure, or otherwise interesting movie each and every week for paid subscribers. Follow this link for more details on everything you get subscribing to Fade to Lack!
If you have never seen the 1984 version of A Christmas Carol directed by Clive Donner and starring George C. Scott, you have done yourself a disservice. This is easily the greatest screen version of one of the greatest stories ever told, and simply one of my favorite films ever made. I inherited my love for it from my Dad, who adored the film (and Scott in particular, given his affection for the film Patton), but the older I get, the more I develop my own love for what Donner and company achieved here.
The film is a fairly literal adaptation, using much of Dickens’ wonderful dialogue; while I sometimes find that screenwriters can craft more organic films by changing the novel to better suit the cinematic format – many Dickens films are unbearably talky – there’s something about the writing in A Christmas Carol that translates to film incredibly well, that demands to be spoken aloud; many of the best adaptations are the ones that allow the actors to bask in the glory of Dickens’ impeccable prose. This version also includes several darker scenes usually cut from adaptations, but which I think are really crucial. Chief among them is the Ghost of Christmas Present showing Scrooge the “children of humanity,” ‘Ignorance’ and ‘Want,’ depicted as starved, malnourished children, a metaphor for all the people mankind overlooks and ignores in our everyday sins of insensitivity. It is a moment that implicates not just Scrooge or those who hoard wealth, but most members of the audience. Donner’s film never shies away from the horrors inherent in this story, and seeing this material dramatized is arguably more impactful that reading it on the page.
Yet the film’s number one asset is its casting. There have been countless takes on Ebenezer Scrooge over the last century, but I submit there are none better than George C. Scott’s. Scott is the Scrooge one imagines when reading the Dickens novel; he tears into the cruelty with glee, but more importantly, cuts through it all with quite genuine pathos. There’s real hurt here. Real shame. And real joy and grace, when the redemption comes. A magnificent performance. No line reading, no gesture, no mannerism, no malicious laugh is out of place in Scott’s performance – and one big thing this film gets better than other adaptations, largely thanks to Scott, is the pace of Scrooge’s transformation. It’s quite gradual, glacial even, and then the finale is like a breaking of the dam. Some versions start breaking the ice too early or too late; this is the rare one that gets it just right. As far as I’m concerned, this is and shall forever continue to be the definitive portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge.
Backing Scott is the terrific supporting cast: Angela Pleasance and Edward Woodward, as the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, deliver their messages with gravitas and pathos. I love the interplay between Scrooge and the ghosts, and the disgust with which they rightly view him at times. The moment when Woodward’s Ghost of Christmas Present throws Scrooge’s words about the “surplus population” back at him is simply electric. As Fred, Roger Rees nicely contrasts Scott’s bitterness with a sincere and infectious cheer, his belief in Scrooge’s capacity for betterment making us believe there might be a soul worth redeeming in there as well. And David Warner is every inch as good a Bob Cratchit as Scott is a Scrooge; he makes you care for Bob and his family in a profound, emotional way, and he lets so much pain break through. His Cratchit is a man making a very conscious effort to be good during trying times, which makes his quiet everyday heroism feel all the more earned.
The look of the film is genuinely incredible, especially considering this was a TV production. It absolutely looks like it was filmed on location in the 1800s, a result of shooting in Shrewsbury, England, a town noted for its historic, well-kept architecture. It’s more or less the next best thing to hopping in a time machine and filming in Victorian London, though of course, a great deal of accomplished production design was done here as well, handled by the great Roger Murray Leach, who was the production designer on Doctor Who during the greatest period in that show’s history (the Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes years starring Tom Baker, in the mid-1970s). The costumes, hair styles, and mannerisms all feel equally organic to the period, and this adaptation maintains a level of authenticity unparalleled by other versions of A Christmas Carol.
The film moves along quite well and is both enjoyable and powerful for its first 80 minutes or so, but it truly enters the upper pantheon of Christmas Carol films in the last fifteen minutes, once Scrooge is returned to his bed on Christmas morning. Scott illustrates this changed Scrooge beautifully, and there’s an infectious joy in seeing him right all his wrongs, which is an important point this adaptation nails: That Scrooge’s joy comes specifically from the ability for a new chance to do good. He has his eyes opened to the truth that one can make the world tangibly better, and he is overjoyed at the chance to do it. When you get this idea right in any Christmas Carol performance or adaptation, it feels so beautifully life-affirming. In our world today, our political and economic climate, it hits me square in the heart. This reminder that good can always be done, real good, and that doing it is redemptive and healing, a miracle we get to experience as human beings. That’s the kind of joy Scott wrangles here, and it lands with enormous weight.
Take the way Scrooge makes things right with the Cratchit family. Most adaptations depict Scrooge going straight to Bob’s door on Christmas Day, but in Dickens’ book, and here in the 1984 film, he sends the turkey anonymously and then spends the day with his own family. That strikes me as more genuinely selfless – he just wants the Cratchits to have a good day. And when he fully reconciles with Cratchit on Boxing Day, he does so by being a trickster for a minute, setting Bob up to expect more abuse before offering him the hand of charity and friendship. Scrooge is, in the best versions of A Christmas Carol, a playful figure – playful in cruel ways, early on, but playful in a deeply wonderful, loving way by the end. I love that part of the transformation, and Scott is particularly well-equipped to depict it.
The greatest scene in this Christmas Carol, though – honestly, one of my very favorite sequences in the history of film – is Scrooge’s reconciliation with Fred on Christmas Day. It contains the only significant deviation from the book, but it’s an absolutely brilliant one: Rather than the brief reunion Dickens wrote, Donner’s film finds Scrooge apologizing to Fred, explaining how much he regrets failing to embrace his nephew as family sooner. Fred never acts bitter, and accepts his Uncle with open arms. The unwavering absolution on display is immensely powerful, and I challenge viewers to remain dry-eyed as Scott says “God forgive me for the time I have wasted.” It is one of the great lines and line deliveries in the history of the cinema.
NEXT WEEK: We’ll be taking New Year’s Day off, but then come back on January 8th with a double review of Akira Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO and SANJURO, re-releasing that week on 4K from The Criterion Collection!
Read the book 200 Reviews by Jonathan R. Lack in Paperback or on Kindle
Subscribe to PURELY ACADEMIC, our monthly variety podcast about movies, video games, TV, and more
Like anime? Listen to the podcast I host with Sean Chapman, JAPANIMATION STATION, where we review all sorts of anime every week. Watch on YouTube or Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.