Scrooge

On Christmas Eve the miserly moneylender Ebenezer Scrooge is visited first by the ghost of his old partner and then by the spirits of past, present and future. He is forced to watch his own life from outside. The film is not interested in Christmas cheer. It is interested in how miserliness is made: this adaptation gives more room to Scrooge's youth than most. His sister's death, the loss of his fiancée and the founding of the firm with his partner are each shown, so the man is not born like this but becomes it step by step. The form is dark: shadowed black and white, narrow London streets and a genuinely frightening Marley. It is shot as a ghost story, not a fable. Brian Desmond Hurst directed. Alastair Sim's Scrooge is generally counted the best reading of the part; his exaggerated joy in the final morning works precisely against the harshness of everything before it. The film did not find the expected audience in America on release; it became a classic through years of television repeats. Who it is for: viewers who like Dickens adaptations and classic British cinema. Who it is not for: anyone planning to watch with children. The ghost scenes and the graveyard section may be too dark for young viewers.