Scrooge (1970): The Best Christmas Film Ever
My case for Scrooge (1970) being the best-made Christmas film. Does contain spoilers for both the story of A Christmas Carol and the film It’s a Wonderful Life. Stay Safe.
As we near the festive period, I find myself doing the same thing as most previous years and consult my database to create a list of Christmas films for this year’s calendar. I have some general staples for certain days: Elf is always a great choice on 23rd December and I always make sure to watch It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve (more on that later). But what has been my favourite Christmas film for at least a decade or more has been the 1970 musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol called Scrooge. With most categories that you can claim one film or another is the greatest, the choice is always personal. But with Christmas films, there is only one film that can take that mantle of the best and that is this adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Nothing else compares, so let’s talk about why.
First to mention is the story that it’s adapted from and its themes it provides throughout the runtime. The story can be boiled down to an old man who is miserable and despises Christmas is visited by ghosts to convince him to regain his previous love of the season through visions of the past, present and future. And, as most of you will know, it results in Ebenezer Scrooge pleading to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come that the former can change and is given that second chance with which he appears to live up to his promise. It’s one of the best redemption stories in existence and provides an insanely great base for excellent characters to jump out. The story is also placed in the perfect time frame: Christmas Eve. It allows the tension and the conflict of the story to take place all the way up to Christmas Day and then have the success of the story and its happy ending occur on the actual day providing more nostalgic position feelings towards it. The story also nicely implements the rule of three with the ghosts that visit Scrooge. It not only provides that nice completeness of the number three but also applies a range of emotions (that do change depending on the adaptation) to those three ghosts to throw the audience back and forth in a great rollercoaster of those emotions. Another element from the original story to strengthen the film is the character arc of Ebenezer Scrooge. I’ve already mentioned that the story follows a redemption arc for Scrooge but generally what makes these redemption arcs magical is the fact that the main character starts off as unlikable. Some of the greatest characters in fiction are great because of their journey from easily unlikable to satisfyingly personable. But then after all these points, why this version of A Christmas Carol? Why do all the others fail to achieve this particular film’s greatness?
One of these is the fact that the film is a musical. The aim for a Christmas film should generally be to spread the cheeriness of the season or to get across the sense of a community (whether that be friends, family or a mix of both). Or, more simply, happiness and togetherness. The aim of happiness is made even more achievable in a film by adding a number of songs. Music, even more melancholic stuff, creates pure joy and amusement for any viewer. So a whole cast of songs, spreading that Christmas cheer does wonders for the goals set up by the film. In a way, the songs also achieves the goal of togetherness through the use of two set pieces in the film where a large number of people are involved in the songs. The film also reprises a few of the songs in the finale which relates to one of my rules of what makes good films: repetition. Repetition not only gives clear call backs to previous parts of the film but also allows those call backs to be measured against the film in its current state and give the audience an impression of how far the character or the story has progressed. Although a lot of films do use general call backs in film, exact quotes of dialogue or reprised songs that have the same lyrical content I feel provide a stronger feeling of how much progression has been made throughout the film.
The cast is another reason why this particular adaptation is the best Christmas film. Other adaptations have been able to cast fantastic actors, the big example being Alastair Sim in the 1951 version. But all of these great castings have the exact same problem. They all have that great casting everyone talks about but the rest of the cast of that particular adaptation always falls short. There are never any standout performances bar the main star (who also tends to be the actor for Scrooge). Even if the production has an all-star cast, barely any of them stand out or do anything unique in the film. But in the greatest Christmas film of all time, there are many standout performances from the cast and although the film contains high-calibre talent like Albert Finney, most of the other great performances come from a range of unknown actors. Obviously an unknown actor with a great performance doesn’t, by itself, add value to the production, but instead indicates a great job in some combination of casting, writing and directing. If at this point you’re on board with the idea of the musical adaptation being the best option out of the many versions of A Christmas Carol, you may still be thinking about the other Christmas films that aren’t based on the aforementioned Dickens’ work. If I tried to go through every single film that someone considered to be better than the main film in question, it would take forever. So I’ll take the film It’s a Wonderful Life, which is generally considered to be one of the best (and on some people’s list, the best) Christmas films ever and a personal favourite of mine.
So why doesn’t It’s a Wonderful Life take the number one slot of best Christmas film ever? The answer: It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t that much of a Christmas film. This may be blasphemous to some and I can see why on initial reading of the statement. To explain this, let’s go back to the description of what a Christmas film needs to aim for in order to be successful. Happiness and togetherness. And to be fair the film does include an amount of both. The ending, the primary source of this, is full of Christmas cheer and a sense of togetherness as our protagonist is reunited with his family coming to a better appreciation of his life whilst the town helps get him out of the trouble that sent him spiralling in the first place. And you may notice me repeating the phrase “coming to a better appreciation of his life” which sounds awfully a lot like the general themes of Scrooge. This is true, but the fact is what makes this work in Scrooge is completely lacking from the majority of the runtime of It’s a Wonderful Life. The elements really shine in its finale because those elements are completely missing and void from the rest of the film. A good chunk of the film isn’t even set during Christmas. Scrooge does not have these problems. Scrooge manages to keep up the happiness and togetherness throughout the film even though its protagonist is, to begin with, thoroughly more unlikable than that of George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life. It does this through giving the job of holding up these elements to its great side characters. It gives its side characters great songs to sing, families that we actually spend a lot of time with to connect to, and fantastic end set pieces that, compared to It’s a Wonderful Life, might not provide a better ending but provide a more cohesive film. It’s a Wonderful Life is a better constructed film, but Scrooge (1970) is a better constructed Christmas film. I wanted to write a little more but
There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish. The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the time that you have.
-Boad
