Scrooge

Christmas Eve in London. Ebenezer Scrooge gives nobody a penny, grudges his clerk even a day off and refuses his nephew's invitation. That night his dead partner arrives in chains and announces three ghosts. The film tells the known story as a musical. The subject is not miserliness but the man seeing his own funeral. The most striking element of this version is the future section: Scrooge is taken down to hell and given an office made of chains, told he will go on working after death. Absent from Dickens, that passage is unexpectedly dark for a young audience. The form is traditional studio musical. The songs are Leslie Bricusse's and one of them became known independently of the film. The crowded street scenes and sets were built in the studio. Albert Finney is at the centre, in his early thirties at the time; he plays the old Scrooge under makeup and the young one with his own face. He won a Golden Globe for it. Alec Guinness plays the dead partner Marley and is held in the air on wires throughout his scenes. Ronald Neame directs. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Christmas films and British musicals. Who it is not for: anyone watching with small children; the hell section is harsher than expected.