Book To Film - SCROOGE (1951)

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December 13 Scrooge (Brian Desmond Hurst, UK, 1951, 86 mins)
Albert Finney, Patrick Stewart, Michael Caine, Kelsey Grammer, George C. Scott, Guy Pearce, Jim Carrey, Bill Murray, Basil Rathbone, Luke Evans, Cicely Tyson, Johnny Depp… all have stepped into the shoes of Charles Dickens’s miserly Ebenezer Scrooge in dozens of A Christmas Carol adaptations. But one name that consistently tops the list of Best Scrooges is the incomparable Alastair Sim.

Unlike some one‑dimensional interpretations that treat Scrooge’s redemption as a neat moral pivot, Sim’s masterful performance allows cruelty and vulnerability to coexist as the better man buried under the bah-humbug begins to slowly reemerge. It’s a tricky tightrope to walk, but Sim, known primarily for comic roles, plays Scrooge as so visibly haunted and weighed down by his past that his childlike glee in the finale feels earned, and is infectiously joyous.

Adapted by Noel Langley (The Wizard of Oz) and directed by Brian Desmond Hurst, this beloved British Christmas classic perfectly captures the chilly Gothic atmosphere of Dickens's novella, to which it remains largely faithful. Sim and Michael Hordern (Jacob Marley) would later reprise their respective roles for Richard Williams’s 1971 animated adaptation.

This session will be presented by Damien Spiccia, who will host a discussion following the screening.

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is available in paperback, Kindle, and as audiobooks read by a variety of narrators,…