How people must have choked on their mulled wine back in 1970 when it was revealed that director Ronald Neame would be filming Scrooge, his own take on Dickens’ tale with Albert Finney as Ebeneezer and, what’s more, it would be an all-singing, all-dancing musical extravaganza. This was decades before the Muppets gave it a go and I’m sure that the concept of a musical Scrooge movie must have seemed crazy and sacrilegious at the time but, you know what? It’s not bad!
Sure, most of the songs are pretty terrible and Finney doesn’t so much sing as he does growl, but the whole thing is done with such chutzpah that I find it infectious. Certainly, it’s a lot jollier and more engaging than the grim 1951 effort.
I enjoy Finney as elderly Scrooge, despite him only being in his early thirties at the time. His old fogie makeup is impressive, so when they do the flashbacks and it’s handsome young Albert still playing young Scrooge it feels much more natural. His performance is enjoyably bizarre too, very physical, slightly hunched, his features permanently twisted into a scowl. It’s verging on panto but he gets away with it because the tone of the whole thing is a bit daft anyway, all jaunty show tunes and jolly street urchins dancing about the place.
As mentioned, most of the songs are pretty sub-par but delivered with enough enthusiasm and flamboyance that they don’t grate too much. However, as with most musicals in my humble opinion, the songs really pad out the film’s runtime, taking a tale that could easily be over in ninety minutes and stretching it to over two hours. However, ‘...Carol’ is such a durable, universal tale that it’s a hard story to mess up, so this is still a really entertaining movie.
Not all of it works, mostly Neame’s additions that weren’t in Dickens’ book, like Scrooge’s ill-advised ‘trip to Hell’ - a rubbish-looking place that appears to have been constructed out of papier mache and populated by oily, topless muscle-men in black hoods, giving off a decidedly un-Christmassy S&M vibe. Fair play to them for trying something new but the whole sequence feels unnecessary and sticks out like a sore thumb.
The ghosts are a little more fun than in the 1951 adaptation, with the skeletal ‘Future’ ghost (Paddy Stone) proving particularly freaky. The ‘Present’ ghost (Kenneth More) is wonderfully merry with a booming baritone reminiscent of Brian Blessed in Flash Gordon, while Alec Guinness pops up as Jacob Marly, bringing some real gravitas to things. I find the ‘Past’ ghost (Edith Evans) to be particularly interesting here, as rather than depicting her as an ethereal sprite, they’ve made her a kindly older lady who appears genuinely sympathetic and moved by Ebeneezer’s rough childhood woes.
The film is colourful and watchable, with the effects sequences becoming progressively weirder and more inventive as things go along. Though the 1951 version featured some pretty rubbish ‘flying’ scenes, Neame’s film pushes the boat out significantly more, delivering a few ‘wow-for-the-era’ moments. Even if those ‘hell’ scenes are naff, Scrooge’s journey to the netherworld, down a terrifying, fiery tunnel is pretty class, unexpected and effective.
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