“Come In! And Know Me Better, Man!" | Alastair Sim (1971)

Richard Williams' cartoon has Scrooge awakened by the clock tolling One, but Scrooge's bedcurtains are already pulled aside and the light is already pouring through his door. He climbs out of bed and shields his face from the brightness as the unseen (by the audience, anyway) Spirit bellows, "Enter, Ebenezer Scrooge!"

Scrooge goes into the other room where the giant-sized ghost does sit on a throne of food. Garland decorates the walls and the only sound other than the Spirit's voice is the crackling fire in his cornucopia-shaped torch.

 

The Spirit's appearance is pretty much like Dickens describes. His robe and trim are the correct colors and the robe is open in the front to reveal the Ghost's broad, bare chest. His chest is oddly colored with a band of brown that I think is supposed to indicate hair. It's the same color brown as the Spirit's long hair and beard, it's just not like any patch of chest hair that I've ever seen.

He has the bare feet though and the swordless sheath, but the sheath isn't particularly rusted, nor are there icicles in the holly crown. The animation has always been very good in this version and there's a lot of detail in this scene around the food, but it skimps in other areas like these parts of the Spirit's costume.

This Scrooge has been humble and compliant since the end of Marley's visit and that continues in this scene. He doesn't talk about the previous night's lesson still working on him, but we've seen that it has and he tells this Ghost that he's willing to profit by whatever the Ghost has to teach him. All the other dialogue is cut out though, including the stuff about the Spirit's older brothers. That's a shame, but this is only a half-hour cartoon, so trims are necessary.

The Spirit of course invites Scrooge to touch his robe and I like the way that Scrooge's hand is engulfed in the fabric as he grabs hold. 

“Another Idol Has Displaced Me” | Alastair Sim (1971)

Richard Williams' cartoon places this scene outside, which I like better than the indoor versions. Outside always feels like neutral territory to me and that's a natural vibe for a break-up scene. What's weird about this version is that it takes place in a very green, lush park. It's clearly not winter time, so the Ghost of Christmas Past seems out of its jurisdiction showing this to Scrooge. (Incidentally, the live-action version with Alastair Sim from the '50s also has the Past Ghost showing Scrooge things that didn't take place at Christmas, which also bothers me about that one.)

Belle is wearing a black dress and hood, so she could definitely be in mourning, though she never mentions it in dialogue. Her lines are an abridged version of Dickens' text, so she also doesn't bring up any specific thing that Scrooge has done to make her leave him. He rolls his eyes at her though when she talks about his master passion Gain having engrossed him. If he does that a lot with her, I don't blame her for getting tired of him. And it's clear from his own dialogue that he doesn't disagree about the change in his attitude; he just doesn't see what the big deal is.

Young Scrooge seems mostly annoyed by her. This is inconvenient to him. For her part, she's hunched over in a submissive posture, but she's not backing down. It seems like it's taking a lot out of her to confront him like this, but she's determined to go through with it.

Like in the earlier scenes of Christmas Past, this Old Scrooge continues to be humble and compliant even as he asks why the Ghost wants to torture him. And when the Spirit throws the responsibility back on Scrooge, Scrooge's grabbing the extinguisher cap is an act of desperation, not anger. He puts it over the Ghost's head and the cap disappears along with the Spirit. There's no final flurry of other faces, the park simply transforms into Scrooge's bedroom, having completely skipped the final vision of Belle's married life.

“Why, It’s Old Fezziwig!” | Alastair Sim (1971)

Richard Williams' cartoon makes great use of animation to facilitate scene changes. The Ghost and Old Scrooge are looking at Boy Scrooge in the schoolhouse, then there's a rapid series of aging Scrooges. The scenery around him changes, but his posture stays the same. In the first several he's reading a book like he was at school, but then that changes into a book that he's writing in until the series settles on Scrooge writing in a ledger at Fezziwig's warehouse.

Old Scrooge - who's been remarkably humble and compliant since Marley's visit - is full of giddy wonder at seeing his old boss again. Fezziwig is fat, he does sit at a high desk, and he's wearing an old-fashioned brown wig (though not officially a Welsh one). He orders Dick and Young Scrooge to "clear away," but he doesn't specify how and we just see the apprentices move some books and chairs.

Old Scrooge never actually mentions Dick. He says the line about "he was very much attached to me," but he's referring to Fezziwig in this version. And that does seem to be the case. Fezziwig pays special attention to Young Scrooge. Since we don't know anything about Dick, I can only speculate why Fezziwig focused on Scrooge, but putting this together with Dickens' description of Fezziwig's compassion for outsiders, I imagine that Fezziwig saw that Scrooge - whom we know was a sad child - needed extra love and encouragement

The scene cuts from the clearing away to the fiddler on the desk as Fezziwig welcomes his guests. None of them are named, so we don't know how any of them are connected to Fezziwig, but Young Scrooge does dance with a young woman at one point. She has a different hair color than Belle will in the next scene, so it probably isn't her, but it's nice to see Scrooge enjoying himself.

Since Dick is hardly mentioned in this one, there's no scene where he and Young Scrooge praise Fezziwig for the party, so the Ghost just comments on what a "small matter" the party is while watching the celebration.

Old Scrooge defends Fezziwig as usual and I like how this version handles Scrooge's connecting Fezziwig's treatment of him with his own, abusive attitude toward Bob Cratchit (who also seems to be a monumentally sad person). Instead of having him get wistful and the Ghost asking him about it, Williams cuts from the gaiety of the party to a flashback of Scrooge leaving Cratchit as the office from earlier in the film. There's even an abrupt change of music from the merry fiddle to sinister woodwinds as the vision rushes into Scrooge's mind. It's quite effective. It's so quick that the Ghost doesn't even seem to notice. It just grabs Scrooge's wrist and tells him that they have to go, "Quick!," to their next scene.

“I Was a Boy Here!” | Alastair Sim (1971)

Richard Williams' animated version does have a transition scene between Scrooge's bedroom and the countryside, but it's quick and super cool. The Spirit takes Scrooge's hand and leads him towards the camera, which lingers on Scrooge's face as the background strobes around him and we see city rushing by. There's no music or sound except for some bird wings just before the images settle on Scrooge in the country. It's surreal and jarring, but still suggestive that a flight has taken place.

This Scrooge has been relatively humble and compliant since partway through Marley's visit and that continues here. When the Spirit asks Scrooge what that is on his cheek, Scrooge wipes away a tear and says that it's nothing, but he doesn't expect the ghost to actually believe him.

As the ghost explains that they're witnessing unconscious shadows of the past, the scene becomes the schoolhouse. The children are already outside, dancing together in circles. There are both girls and boys, so maybe they aren't actually students. I don't know much about Victorian boarding schools, but I've never imagined them to be co-educational where gender is concerned.

The Spirit mentions the "solitary child neglected by his friends" and the scene shifts to inside the school where Scrooge sits reading alone in a room. We can't see the title of the book he's reading, but above his head dance images of a sultan on horseback, Robinson Crusoe's parrot, and soldiers of some kind. Scrooge wipes his eye again and declares his younger self to be a "poor boy," but we never get a reason for it. The Spirit takes Scrooge immediately from this scene to Fezziwig's warehouse.

There's no mention of Fan, much less Scrooge's father. Knowing that Fred is Scrooge's nephew, we know that Scrooge has to have at least one sibling, but they don't play a part in the story. All we know is that Scrooge was a lonely child for undefined reasons.

“Your Reclamation, Then” | Alastair Sim (1971)

Richard Williams' animated version had Scrooge hurry off to bed after his encounter with Marley and we find out in this scene that he did go to sleep. He's awakened by the chime of one though, so there's no sitting up and fretting for the last hour. I'm curious to see if any of the theatrical versions include that and how they might handle it, but I expect that most will just cut straight to the Spirit's showing up.

Michael Redgrave's narration comes back in rather unnecessarily, since he's just describing things we can see onscreen, like the room's filling with light or a ghostly hand drawing back Scrooge's bed curtain. Once Scrooge and the Spirit speak though, Redgrave backs off.

The Spirit itself is super accurate. It's got the long, white hair and the youngish, gender-neutral face. It carries the holly and the cap and there's a bright flame coming from its head. It even flickers in the way Dickens described, with extra limbs and even heads coming into and fading out of view. (One cool result of this is that the Spirit can hold onto its holly and cap, but still have hands to interact with Scrooge.)

Scrooge is very polite to it. He calls it "sir" (that could be his own bias talking as much as any real understanding of the ghost's gender) and he doesn't complain about the light or ask the Spirit to put on its cap. Scrooge is so polite that when the Spirit says that its there for Scrooge's welfare, there's not even a mention of unbroken rest. Scrooge doesn't even think it, as far as we know. If he does, the Spirit doesn't correct him, but I think that line was left out on purpose. Scrooge's attitude seems to be very complacent and it has been since the end of Marley's visit. It looks like Marley did the heavy lifting on this transformation. Scrooge already seems willing to learn.

That might also explain why this Spirit never has to touch Scrooge's heart. It simply says, "Rise, and walk with me," and then whisks Scrooge out of the window. Scrooge doesn't express fear of falling and doesn't appear to need any extra upholding by the Spirit.

“More of Gravy than of Grave” | Alastair Sim (1971)

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Richard Williams' animated version does have a transition from the knocker (another lion face) to Marley, but it's so quick and subtle that I didn't even notice what was happening until the change was done. The designs of the knocker and Marley's face are so similar that only a few lines have to switch and it might as well have been without "any intermediate process of change." Scrooge is shocked by it, but the transformation back to knocker again is just as quick.

Inside, a ghostly hearse does go up the stairs and Scrooge is startled again. But he quickly recovers with a "humbug" and continues to his rooms. The animation is great in this sequence with most of the screen in darkness except for Scrooge's face, which is illuminated by his candle to an almost spectral appearance itself. Makes the whole house feel very creepy. Scrooge continues to mutter "humbug" all the way to his quarters.

The film doesn't have Scrooge searching his rooms or locking his door, but goes straight to him in his nightclothes, eating gruel by the fireplace. It's a faithful rendition of the room in which Scrooge's fire is nothing more than a glow and the hob is clearly visible with Scrooge's saucepan resting on it. I can't tell that there are any Dutch tiles, but the movie skips the second appearance of Marley's face and goes straight to the ringing bells.

Instead of bells all over the house, it's just a trio of service bells that stop abruptly so that Scrooge can hear the clanking of chains. Instead of Scrooge's fire acting strange, his candle flame flickers unnaturally as Marley materializes through the closed door.

Marley is transparent and does have a personal atmosphere that blows his hair and clothing around. Thanks to Alastair Sim's voice talents, Scrooge's joke about the gravy does come across as whistling in the dark, which causes Marley to take things to the next level. When Marley pulls off his bandage, his jaw gapes to an unholy degree. He screams loudly and Scrooge cowers, terrified.

As the conversation continues, Marley does speak in a spooky monotone, but even spookier is that his mouth never moves. It just continues to yawn widely with Marley's voice coming from deep inside. Scrooge is no longer the cold, passionless man he was in the earlier scenes. He's obviously frightened, but I also detect a hint of respect for his partner in the way Sim has him address Marley.

Scrooge doesn't get to talk much, though. Marley schedules the ghosts (over three nights) and then flies through the window with a shriek. He joins a host of other phantoms as Michael Redgrave's narration kicks back in, describing the ghosts' misery as they uselessly stretch out their arms to a mother and child sitting in the snow below.

Scrooge doesn't even get his allowed half-humbug out. Scared out of his wits, he simply runs to his bed and quickly draws closed the curtains.

His Usual Melancholy Tavern | Alastair Sim (1971)

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Richard Williams' animated version also skips dinner, but uses Scrooge's journey home to sneak in some Michael Redgrave narration that Dickens had placed earlier in the story. Specifically, it's the bit about blind men's dogs that would cross the street instead of bringing their masters into Scrooge's vicinity. Williams shows us one such encounter, but the rest of the walk home is done impressionistically in only a couple of shots.

In the first, there's a sketched out street - very grim and murky - with the small, lone figure of Scrooge walking in the background. The second shot has a more distinct Scrooge walking through an empty background that represents fog, with only a hazy spot of light to suggest a window or a lantern. The film goes straight from this nondescript background to Scrooge's door, so there are no details about what Scrooge's house looks like, but the melancholy of Scrooge's situation is very clear.

“If Quite Convenient, Sir" | Alastair Sim (1971)

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In Richard Williams' Oscar-winning cartoon, Scrooge has so far been portrayed as cold-hearted in every sense of the word. He's gotten angry, but for the most part he's calm, aloof, and used to being in complete control of his situation. Cratchit hasn't had much to do, but he looks constantly and deeply sad. There's an enormous imbalance in power between these two men and Cratchit is worn down by it.

For good reason, too. The one time that Scrooge has lost his cool was when Cratchit wished Fred a "Merry Christmas." Scrooge had patiently endured Fred's interruption and was dismissive of him until Cratchit got involved. This Scrooge appears to be especially abusive to his clerk as this year's scene continues to reveal.

After the solicitors leave the counting house, the film fades to black and lets time pass before the clock chimes seven. The film then cuts from the clock to Scrooge and Cratchit as they get ready to go. Cratchit's already dressed for outside and is helping Scrooge by holding the old man's hat. The first line is Scrooge's asking Cratchit about the day off, but for all we know we could be coming in on the middle of a conversation.

Not that Cratchit is all that talkative. His "If quite convenient, sir" is very timid and leads to more lecturing by Scrooge. Alastair Sim delivers his lines languidly, explaining his point as if to a child. To Cratchit's credit though, he sticks up for himself a little when he observes that it's only once a year. That irritates Scrooge though and he's grouchy when he orders Cratchit to be there all the earlier the next morning.

They leave together and it's actually Scrooge who locks the door, as if he doesn't trust Cratchit. This is the saddest, most miserable Cratchit so far.

There's no caroler or street scene in this version. We'll get a little of that next year as we follow Scrooge home, but for now the movie's focused on the two men. And there's certainly no scene with Cratchit joining any boys in sliding on some ice. That kind of levity would completely ruin what the movie's doing with his character so far.

'You Wish to Be Anonymous?' | Alastair Sim (1971)

Index of other entries in The Christmas Carol Project

As we noticed last year with Fred, Chuck Jones' Scrooge is mostly an unemotional fellow. I wondered if that might be a flaw of the animation and voice acting, but with the solicitors I see that it's a deliberate choice.

As Fred leaves Scrooge's office, the solicitors come in and Scrooge rolls his eyes. It's impossible to tell if he's doing that because of his encounter with his nephew or if it's at the prospect of yet another interruption. Since he doesn't yet know why they're here, it reminds me of the rudeness of Reginald Owen's Scrooge. I can see why people go with that choice, but it makes Scrooge less human and more of a caricature. I like to think that this one is rolling his eyes at his nephew, just at an inopportune time.

As the very portly men explain their purpose in visiting, Scrooge taps his face drowsily with his quill. He asks them about the prisons and workhouses, but he's calm and sounds genuinely inquisitive. He's playing with them, even making pathetic faces as he talks. Like with Fred, there's no passion in the scene, but with these two men Scrooge is at least replacing his traditional anger and frustration with something else. It's a weird something else, but the result of both scenes is an aloof, cold-hearted Scrooge who's completely in control.

That's further supported in his reciting some of the solicitors' dialogue before they have a chance to. By the end of the scene, he's literally carrying both sides of the conversation and they don't even have a chance to recite the line about being anonymous. There's no doubt where he stands and they leave as soon as he wishes them a polite, but firm "good afternoon."

'Merry Christmas, Uncle!' | Alastair Sim (1971)

In Richard Williams' animated version, Scrooge's nephew is introduced with the tinkling of the bell over the front door and a flurry of wind that scatters Scrooge's papers. He intrudes on what till now has been a soundless scene except for the ticking of a wall clock and the scratching of quills on paper. His intrusiveness is further emphasized by the animators' having him lean in close to the camera - his face filling the screen - as he questions his uncle's calling Christmas a humbug.

At first I thought this might just be the animators' showing off a bit - the shot is rather fancy and highlights the smoothness of the character's movement as well as the detail in his face - but when we cut to both the nephew and Scrooge in the same shot, the nephew's face is still very close to Scrooge's.

The nephew is friendly, but not overly jolly. That's a weakness in the animation. Though the characters are well-designed, they're not very well-animated. Their expressions don't change much and while their movements look natural, they're far too slow. That gives the conversation the feeling of sort of just going through the motions. Which is perhaps what the nephew's doing. He doesn't seem to really want Scrooge to come to dinner; he's performing an obligation as a family-member. Is he purposely being invasive too in hopes that that'll discourage Scrooge from accepting?

Unfortunately, Scrooge also seems to be just performing his duty as a character in the story. He recites his lines about boiling celebrants in their own pudding, but he stammers his way through them without seeming to mean them. There's no juice in him.

Cratchit is all but absent from the scene except for a reaction shot to... well, it's hard to tell what he's reacting to because the cartoon cuts to him at "every idiot" and cuts away again at "Merry Christmas on his lips," well before the mentions of boiling pudding and holly stakes. It's like Cratchit's cued in on the word "idiot," but it's equally difficult to tell what he's thinking about it. He looks surprised and a little mortified. Does he think Scrooge means him? So what if he does?

In the interest of time, Williams cuts the nephew's big speech and any mention of the wife. So there's no applause from Cratchit and no apparent reason for Scrooge's refusal to come to dinner other than his not liking Christmas. Partly because of this; partly due to the limitations in the characters' acting, Scrooge doesn't seem to dislike his nephew so much as simply disagree with him on this particular issue.

His first couple of Good Afternoons are even pretty laid back. He doesn't get really cranky until Cratchit opens the door for the nephew and the two exchange Merry Christmases. Is Scrooge less tolerant of his clerk's celebrating than he is of his nephew's? It's impossible to tell yet because we've had so little interaction between Scrooge and Cratchit.

Old Sinner: Alastair Sim (1971)

Though Alastair Sim of course played Scrooge in of one of the most famous adaptations of A Christmas Carol, what you may not know is that he was also the voice of Scrooge in Richard Williams' animated version from 1971. And if you didn't know that, you also didn't know that it was produced by Chuck Jones and won an Oscar in 1973 for best animated short.

"Now wait a minute," you might say. "How did it win an Oscar two years after it was released?" I wondered the same thing. Apparently though, it was created for TV and originally aired at Christmas in '71 on ABC. According to this Christmas Carol site, it was released to theaters especially so that it could be eligible for the Oscars. It won, but that led to the Academy's changing its rules so that nothing else originally shown on TV could win again.

It opens with threatening music, an impenetrable fog, and falling snow. The orchestra soon gives way to a children's choir singing "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," but the arrangement still has a sinister air to it. The fog clears enough to show us the London skyline, dominated by chimneys and thick, black smoke. That gives way though to other Christmas-in-London scenes as the credits begin to roll. Saint Paul's Cathedral is in this montage of course, but what's most remarkable is the shaded-pencil style of the animation. It's dirty and messy, but also soft and lovely. Much like Victorian London at Christmastime.

The camera's still flying us over rooftops when the credits end and Michael Redgrave's narration begins:

The Place: London.
The Time: 1843.
The Season: That of jollity, of festivity and charity; holly and berries and good will to all men. With perhaps one exception. It is with this exception that we are concerned in our story. The exception is Ebenezer Scrooge.

The camera closes in on a single, lighted window in all the dark town. We go through and find Scrooge writing at his desk. He looks haughty; almost bored with what he's doing. There's a fade to black, then we fade back in to focus on Bob Cratchit, miserably trying to warm his hands over his small candle flame. Bob looks lifeless, sad to his soul, and utterly defeated. The two work in silence for a couple of seconds before the door opens and a visitor comes in.

Like with the Shower of Stars adaptation, this abbreviated version is going to cut out any preliminary getting to know Scrooge and let the characterization play catch up as the plot unfolds. I said about the Shower of Stars version that that's a logical cut, but it just now occurs to me that the also-short Mickey's Christmas Carol didn't do it that way. As we'll see when we get to it, Disney uses jokes to show Scrooge's stinginess, but also takes the time to reveal his personality (and let us know about dead Marley) before any visitors arrive at the shop. It'll be interesting to continue keeping an eye on these shorter versions and think about what they choose to trim, what they decide to leave in, and what that says about the themes they're highlighting.