A Christmas Carol (1951)

There have been many, many film versions of A Christmas Carol, but this 1951 version may be the best one. One of the main reasons for this is Alistair Sim's excellent performance as Scrooge, but there are many more reasons to recommend this great movie including the rest of the cast. Brain Desmond Hurst is the perfect director for this film. The look of this film is perfect as well, and it is hard to imagine this film with out the work of Art Director, Ralph W. Brinton and Cinematographer, C.M. Pennington-Richards. Everything comes together to make this a classic, and probably the best film version of A Christmas Carol.

Much of the art direction was heavily based off of John Leech's original illustration for the book. According to the audio commentary on the DVD version, one of Charles Dickens's Grand Daughters visited the set, and said it looked just the the book installations to life (Another visitor mentioned was one of my favorite actresses, Bette Davis, who was a big fan of Alistair Sim)

This film has two titles in Britain, where it was made, it was called Scrooge, however in the U.S. it was called A Christmas Carol. It's U.S. Premiere was meant to take place at New York's Radio City Music Hall at Christmas time, however the theater management was not happy with the film as they felt it was too dark and grim, and therefore not good entertainment for a family audience. The much more lighthearted 1938 MGM version did premiere there by the way.The film's actual U.S. Premiere was at the  Guild Theater on Halloween Night. It did not do very well in the U.S., but was a huge hit in it's home country of Britain. Despite this it would still as the years went by grow into being considered a classic in the U.S. as well.

The editor for this film was Clive Donner, who would later direct the 1984 film version of A Christmas Carol, that starred George C. Scott. Two of the actors in this film, Alistair Sim and Michael Hordern would reprise their roles as Scrooge and Marley for the 1971 animated version, directed by Richard Williams (best remembered as the animation director for Who Framed Roger Rabbit).

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/70899/A-Christmas-Carol/articles.html
DVD audio commentary by Marcus Hearn and George Cole
DVD introduction by Leonard Maltin