A Christmas Carol (1971)
Oh, a wonderful pudding!
A cartoon version of Charles Dickens's Story of Ebenezer Scrooge, in the style of the original illustrations by 'Phiz.'
Every word in this production of the most seasonal of Christmas stories is as written. Nearly a year in the making, involving some 30,000 drawings, the animators based their sketches on 19th-century London after months of research. Such care was taken to achieve the maximum authenticity that even the bells used were actually ringing in Dickens's days.
With the voices of Alastair Sim as Scrooge, Michael Hordern as Marley's Ghost
(Colour)From The Radio Times, December 24th 1972.
I love Dickens, or admittedly, the idea of Dickens, for as hard as I try, I still can’t get my head around the eight hundred and one pages of The Pickwick Papers (1836), or at least past Chapter Four. It’s a jocular yarn is Pickwick: of sporting japes and cockney coachmen, set during the fag-end of Georgian England (actually William IV), a publishing phenomenon when it first came out (in serial form), a literary sensation which had the readers queuing round the block. I then tried one of those audio recordings — I couldn’t sleep — and that did the trick. By Chapter Five, I was fast asleep, like a baby. But I’ll have another shot in the New Year.
Which takes us to A Christmas Carol, Dickens’ moving tale of redemption, first published in 1843 in a handsome binding of red cloth and gilded page edges. There is hope for us all, whatever our stage in life. And hope is the most attractive of virtues. Incidentally, I covered A Christmas Carol almost a year ago to the day, when I began WEEKEND FLICKS. One of my earliest posts. But I trust you’ll allow me to revisit it again, or at least, to take a fresh take. For there’s a very special version of A Christmas Carol which deserves to be seen every Christmas, year in year out. And for me, it’s become a yearly ritual. But more of that in a minute.
In recent years The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) has gained a cult following. In hip quarters it’s become fashionable to describe it as the ‘definitive’ version, the closest to the original, with Empire magazine describing it as ‘the ultimate Dickens adaptation’, and:
As Kermit himself tells us in a behind the scenes interview for Entertainment Tonight, the team tried to stay faithful to the original. The only difference, he argues, is that “there’s lots of frogs and pigs and chickens and rats playing the main parts. I think Charles would have liked it that way.”
Well. I sat through The Muppet Christmas Carol a day or so ago (oh, the things I do for WEEKEND FLICKS.!, and it cost me eleven bloody quid!), and I need to raise a metaphorical eyebrow. Look, as much as I love the Muppets (and I’m a devoted fan of The Muppet Show (1976-1981)), it’s about as original to the book as Santa Claus is to St. Nick. Okay, Gonzo (the crow) is Charles Dickens. In a furry top hat. Nice touch that. And Kermit the frog makes a perfect Bob Cratchit and the depiction of London street life, the singing cabbages and the scribbling rodents — that’s fun. But where, pray, are the Lighthouse keepers? Where are the miners? And where are the darker elements? Where is the fog? Where are Ignorance and Want? I’m not convinced by Michael Caine’s Scrooge either (somehow, he’s just not right) and in the hands of Disney, Victorian London looks like Medieval Prague in plastic.
There have, of course, been numerous productions of A Christmas Carol. Apart from the 1951 version (which, to some extent) set the standard, I’m keen on the Sir Patrick Stewart made-for-television film of 1991: a faithful, workmanlike production, with lovely casting (Richard E. Grant as Bob Cratchit, Dominic West as the jolly nephew, and an especially perceptive performance from Saskia Reeves as the long-suffering Mrs Cratchit) and equally lovely location work, set (shock horror!) amongst the yellow brick and cobbles of London itself. I’ve seen it several times now (there’s a high quality HD version on YouTube) — and it holds up every time.
But for me, the definitive A Christmas Carol remains the sophisticated Richard Williams animation from 1971 — in all its Victorian Gothic glory. I’ve added an embedded YouTube video near the top of the post, which, crossing my fingers, may actually work. It’s the first time I’ve done this on Substack. And, hopefully, you should be able to watch it, directly from this post.
Zoom back in time to the morning of Christmas Eve, 1972, and I’m watching this with my grandparents on BBC1. I’m seven years old. And it made a terrific impact. An impact which still resonates with me to this day. Especially the terrifying images of Ignorance and Want cowering beneath the ermine of the Ghost of Christmas Present. Oh, this is Dickensian dark stuff — as it should be:
They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread…
“Spirit, are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.
“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”
Capturing the true spirit of A Christmas Carol is no mean feat: it’s what separates the turkey from the golden goose; Richard Williams’ delightful film has to be up there with the best. Williams understood the sensibilities of the Victorian era. His innovative animations for Tony Richardson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) are based on Punch cartoons drawn at the time of the Crimean War. And in A Christmas Carol (1971), Scrooge’s panelled Clerkenwell chambers are brought to life in all their dingy, shadowy, four-postered Dickensian glory. It’s a literary animation — and so much the better for that — based on the original 19th century etchings of John Leech (The Radio Times confused Leech with Phiz), the wood engravings of Gustave Doré and the 1930s drawings of Milo Winter.
Think 1960s and think Victorian revival. You name it: from Stephenson’s Rocket to King’s Road surplus scarlet; from Victorian restaurant typography to Penny Farthings (as brandished by No. 6); from William Morris wallpaper to The Great Exhibition — Queen Victoria Ruled Okay. Richard Williams’ A Christmas Carol (1971) could only have been made at a certain time: its intense Victorian atmosphere seen from the prism of the early 1970s; a look, I suspect, today’s animators might struggle to reproduce.
And the darker aspects of A Christmas Carol, quite rightly, are very much part of the brief. It is, after, all a ghost story — one of the greatest ghost stories in literature — set at the time of the Industrial Revolution (and all that comes with it) and the film includes sequences young children may find frightening. So be warned. But so much the better for that: avoiding (as much as I love early Disney) the saccharine, schmaltzy sentimentality of that otherwise distinguished studio. St Michael’s Cornhill is also lovingly reproduced, the church clock tower Scrooge would have seen from his Counting House in Newman’s Court in the City of London.
“You fear the world too much… All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall of one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you…”
Williams’ studio drew the animation by hand, in pencil, over and over again: a work of mind-boggling minutiae and complexity. Part of the course back then, before the dreaded CGI changed everything. In 1972, Richard Williams won a deserved Oscar for the ‘Best Animated Short Film’. A Christmas Carol (1971) is a truly wonderful film (all 25 glorious minutes of it), an aesthete’s delight. And until recently, it was more or less unavailable — there’s no DVD. But the good news is that it’s now available to download on Amazon Prime Video, and there are several versions on YouTube. I’ve added a link towards the top of the post.
Right. Where are we? This post was Film Recommendation No. 104 and the fourth film for Christmas. I'm now in full swing with my Christmas film list — there never was such a list! I'll be back on Wednesday morning with a bonus post for the paid subscribers (a bargain £5 a month or £50 a year). Paid subscribers also get full access to the archive. And we still need to revisit Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan (1990). That's a must at Christmas. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy Richard Williams’ A Christmas Carol. It’s a gem.
Dear Luke - the one comment I feel compelled to add re the Muppet Christmas Carol, is the accuracy of the costumes as timr progresses: from late Georgian, through the Regency to high Victorian, there's meticulous attention to detail in the human characters' dress.
There might be more detail online - but as I know you're a stickler for historical accuracy, notwithstanding the inclusion of singing cabbages - I think you'd be interested.
Dickens was obsessed with making money throughout his life.His father and whole family were sent to the workhouse when he was young.
He sold his stories three times.Once in a serial form,then as books and then as dramatic readings on his popular tours.
He very much liked his drink.
A bowl of Smoking Bishop featured in a Christmas Carol.Red hot pokers were involved.