More on A Christmas Carol

Last December I wrote about one of our family traditions - each year we see at least one version of Dickens' classic tales. On Thursday we took two friends to the Sacramento Theater Company production of the play - this is their 20th anniversary production and it is quite good.

But tonight I saw one of the three most popular versions of the novelette - the one with George C. Scott. Scott's version was done in 1984 for TV. From any reasonable view of the production the thing was done without regard to the actual Dickens story (except in the broadest of terms) and with an eye toward using an actor with the gravitas of Scott. Clive Donner was the director his writer (Pierre Boutron) tried to update the story. But they did a horrible job. Scott is a bit to Pattonesque for his role. But more importantly Boutron tried to eliminate some of the most important lines in the novela. For example, at the end of his time with Ebeneezer the spirit of Christmas present shows two urchins - the one ignorance and the other want. (Dickens point is that ignorance is to be worried about more than want.) But Boutron's language for that point misses it completely. In the original novela Dickens handled this key scene like this "This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end." That is powerful language - even in the stilted English of the 1840s - but Boutron makes some other social point.

Scott has some justification for his interpretation. In the original text the first description of Scrooge is thus "But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge." But in my mind Scott overplays that description.

In my mind a good adaptation of the story was done in 1938 with British actor Reginald Owen. The adaptation was done by Hugo Butler and the director was Edward Marin. Owen is a bit stylized but his transformation is believable. There are some pretty special effects for the time. Owen took the part because Lionel Barrymore (who had done a lot on the radio) had a broken hip. When Owen did this he had been an actor for 33 years.

But my favorite, which I never grow tired of is the 1951 production by Jack Warner. Noel Langley did the adaptation and Alister Sim was Mr. Scrooge. Sim was actually the rector of Edinburgh University at the time the movie was made. When you watch his performance you see a lot of the mannerisms that we associate with Scrooge in other versions that have their origin in his performance. Sim actually beat out Harold McMillan for the rectorship a few years before he did this movie. One of his quotes tells a lot about his appreciation for the cinema. "At first I was not sure if I liked films. The sequences are so disconnected and mechanical I thought I should have difficulty "getting into the skin" of the characters. But I soon found that the care, precision and concentrated energy that attends the photographing of each scene conspires to pitch one into the right frame of mind." Even with that he worked in 61 movies.

Dickens is one of my favorite authors. His ability to draw characters out is phenomenal. When you read the original text of Dickens you also begin to understand some of the images that are common to all versions - for example the picture above shows the Spirit of Christmas Present -which is the one that is commonly associated with the story in almost all versions.