dir. Brian Desmond Hurst
(US title: A Christmas Carol)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 50

There are many decent-to-excellent film versions of “A Christmas Carol,” but this one is far and away my favourite, in large part because of its marvelous casting, superb performances (particularly from Alastair Sim as Scrooge), and striking B&W cinematography. Every single member of the cast is on point, camera angles are uniformally well-chosen, the musical score is quite striking (more about that later), the supporting characters are also very memorable, and in short this film is perfect in all the ways — even the additions to Dickens’ story are so well-done you’d hardly believe, for example, that there’s no Mr. Jorkin (Jack Warner) in the original novella.

I sincerely believe that if Dickens could be brought forward in time to watch his story on film, this one would be the one most likely to meet with his approval. Certainly he’d like it better than either of the two best-known previous attempts, the comical short silent version from 1910 or the mediocre full-length version starring Reginald Owen from 1938.

Everyone thinks they know the story of “A Christmas Carol,” but relatively few have ever actually read the original work. Changes required to make the story more visual in the various film versions have added elements to the original story, and so does Scrooge, but it is a testament to the skill of screenplay writer Noel Langley that the joins are largely seamless to anyone this side of a Dickens scholar.

In particular, Dickens’ original social commentary is strongly intact in this version, and resonated deeply in postwar Britain of the early 1950s, when the country struggled with crushing debt from the war, and continuing rationing and austerity. Also preserved is traces of Dickens’ Christian faith, and while explicit in some moments it doesn’t overshadow the message of social justice and the responsibility of the the well-off to alleviate the suffering of the poor.

Aside from the radiant performance of Alastair Sim, who set a bar of believability in both pre- and post-reformation Scrooge that no other actor has equaled, special mention should be made of Mervyn Johns as Bob Cratchit, Hermione Baddeley as Mrs. Cratchit, Michael Hordern as Jacob Marley, the incredible Ernest Thesinger as the mortician, Miles Malleson as Old Joe, and of course Kathleen Harrison as Mrs. Dilber, another performance that will never be bettered. There are a wealth of character actors in this, all doing their British Character Actor thing to an absolutely flawless standard.

Special mention too must go to Richard Addinsell, who gave the film a very booming, menacing score that softens all the way to down to music box-like Victorian lullaby in places, and throws in a traditional ballad (“Barbara Allen”) for the film’s climax. Finally, the combination of Ralph W. Brinton (the art director) and C. M. Pennington-Richards (the cinematographer) produce a detailed but very dark style where the shadows are long, the lighting is sparse (until Scrooge’s reformation), and the harshness of life in Dickens’ fable is not shied away from — it is simply gorgeous to look at, and downright spectacular if you have a OLED high-definition television.

In these current days of increasing western poverty and misery, with inflation making the working class ever poorer and more angry, the film again becomes more relevant to complement its timeless moral. To quote Bob Cratchit, “it is a perfect pudding!”