LUCIDMEDIA

‘Tis The Season for Another Christmas Carol

Written by Adam A. Donaldson Tuesday, 03 November 2009 14:35

For a book he wrote in six weeks and didn’t make a lot of money off of, Charles Dickens surely left an indelible impression with his 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. Barely more than 100 pages (closer to 140 depending on the print edition), A Christmas Carol was huge. In all, 6,000 copies were sold for five shillings a piece that first Christmas, and as with every hot, holiday item all copies were sold out by Christmas Eve.

The book was well received critically as well. A review in the literary magazine The Athenaeum called A Christmas Carol, "A tale to make the reader laugh and cry—to open his hands, and open his heart to charity even toward the uncharitable [...] a dainty dish to set before a King.” Although he didn’t make much money off it, the book’s reception helped Dickens overcome the critical and commercial flop Martin Chuzzlewit.

Much of Dickens’ inspiration for the story came from his own experiences with poverty and societal cruelty in 19th century England. His father, John Dickens, was arrested and sent to a debtors’ prison in 1824, and at the age of 12 he was forced to pawn his books and work in a shoe polish factory. Years later, after becoming a successful writer, Dickens visited the Cornish tin mines and witnessed the appalling conditions that children worked in there.

In the months leading up to his writing of A Christmas Carol, Dickens became deeply interested in the plight of children affected negatively by the Industrial Revolution. Dickens wrote and gave speeches on issues of child poverty and advocated for the combat of ignorance with education. Many of these same ideals found their way into the narrative of A Christmas Carol along with the influence of Washington Irving’s reverence of old English Christmas traditions and Dickens’ own fascination with spirituality.

After the successful initial publication of the book, a stage version of the novella was adapted as early as February 1844. Dickens himself adapted A Christmas Carol as a fundraising tool and rewrote the story so that it might be delivered on stage as a dramatic reading. It’s a tradition that’s continued to this day in communities all across the country with readings staged by the CBC in order to support local charities.

But back at the turn of the 20th century, the advent of film was a natural direction for the story, with the first adaptation being made as a short film in Britain in 1901. Essanay Studios in Chicago followed suit with their own version in 1908 starring Tom Ricketts (The Count of Monte Cristo) as Ebenezer Scrooge. A new version would be made every two-to-three years with Rupert Julian’s 1916 version, The Right to Be Happy, obtaining the honour of being the first feature-length adaptation of the story.

Throughout the 20s and 30s, the US and Britain traded back and forth with Carol adaptations. MGM put together a filmed version in 1938 in which Lionel Barrymore was intended to star, reprising the role of Scrooge whom he played annually on the radio. But due his arthritis, Barrymore was unable to act in the film and was replaced by Reginald Owen.

But in the annals of Scrooge, it was the Brits that won out in contest to make the definitive version of A Christmas Carol in 1951, with Brian Desmond Hurst’s Scrooge starring Alastair Sim. For Sim, Scrooge was both his own most celebrated performance and perhaps the portrayal of Scrooge most often acknowledged as the best. In fact when you hear people talk about Scrooge, it is often more likely to be referred to as the “Alastair Sim Christmas Carol.”

What makes the performance so seminal is the belief you invest in the character’s transformation. Sim makes the miser’s misery really miserable, with Scrooge’s trademark “Bah Humbug” being used interchangeably as both defiant and bitter. Alternatively, his post-spiritual intervention is downright comedic, as much for the reaction of the other characters to Scrooge’s new found light-heartedness as it is for Sim’s delivery. Interestingly, Scrooge, like many classic films, didn’t find its audience upon release in the 1950s. It was thanks to PBS running the movie in the 70s, that Hurst’s Carol found wider acclaim.

It’s interesting then that with a few exceptions, adaptations of A Christmas Carol become the nearly exclusive province of television after that. A musical version was made in 1970 with Albert Finney as Scrooge and Alec Guinness as Marley's Ghost. In 1988, director Richard Donner updated the story by making it about a conceited television executive played by Bill Murray in Scrooged. The Muppets then gave the story a try in 1992 with The Muppets Christmas Carol starring Michael Caine as Scrooge and Kermit the Frog as Cratchit.

More recently, film adaptations have taken great liberties with the original text and made it about other things beside Christmas. Like An American Carol for instance, in which a Michael Moore-like director learns the true meaning of America from hard-working, decent Conservatives; or in Ghost of Girlfriends’ Past where horn dog Matthew McConaughey learns the true meaning of monogamy.

But if there’s a fault with these adaptations, including numerous TV films that place the setting of the in the Old West or recast Scrooge as a woman for example, is that they miss the true intent of Dickens’ original. He was using a Christmas story to scare people straight, from the chains of Marley’s Ghost that bind him to his numerous sins for all eternity, the reaper-like Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come that offers no reassurance, and the stark realism of the time that even a good-hearted boy can die.
Weirdly, one of the only filmed versions of Carol to get the intrinsic horror of the story is 1983’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol, in which Scrooge McDuck played the miser and Mickey Mouse played Cratchit. The cemetery scene where Scrooge asks about the grave, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, lowering his hood to reveal himself as Black Pete, tells him, “Why, yours, Ebenezer. The richest man in the cemetery!" before pushing the old duck in. As Scrooge hangs on holding a root, the coffin beneath him opens and hell fire starts to lick his toes, and seems to draw him closer as he loses his grip. And this is a Disney film mind you.

Truly, it seems that the gothic nature of the story goes amiss even if the end message about being good to your fellow man is not entirely misunderstood. A Christmas Carol is a morality play, a ghost story and a fable. Its universality is positively inspiring, but as malleable as it is in terms of time and place (and gender), it sometimes seems that filmmakers want to go more for whimsy than staying true to the story’s original intent: you reap what you sow. Despite its cutting edge computer graphics, it’ll be nice if at least that much translates in Robert Zemeckis’ Christmas Carol.

A Christmas Carol opens in theatres and IMAX nationwide this Friday.