
Christmas with Wordsworth
Give the gift of great literature this Christmas
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Dec
13
Dec
14
Well, friends. It’s Christmas. Again. Yaaay. Once
again, we celebrate this, the most wonderful time of the year, with deadly
Walmart flash sale stampedes to the soundtrack of Wham!’s “Last Christmas” set
on repeat. Once again, we dance beneath the mistletoe to soul-soothing covers
of the classics and heartwarming original tunes of holiday joy by such crooners
as Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Patti LaBelle, Michael Bublé, Bob Goulet, Wild Man Fischer, and of
course, the inimitable Eric Idle. It’s Christmastime in the city (and in the
country, too, I suppose), and children are laughing, and people are passing,
meeting smile after smile, and on every street corner you hear silver bells.
But it doesn’t stop there. Oh, no.
Everywhere you go, you’re
treated to an aural onslaught, a sadistically violent assault on your delicate
eardrums, with the incessant, relentless and maddening RINGA-DINGA-LINGA-CHINGA-RINGA-LINGA-SHINGA-DINGA-RINGA-RINGA! of
the deafening handbells furiously swung by the dreadful army of panhandling
Salvation Army Santas permanently camped outside of every department store, gas
station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, cathouse, and
doghouse in America. Even at your Christmas dinner table, for some reason,
someone let one of them in. They’ve breached the castle walls. While you’re
delicately nibbling your nana’s spice cake and ham, the Salvation Army Guy
(whose name is most likely Greg) is asking for spare change while thunderously
banging his little bell in your face until the concussive shockwaves of sound cause
spinal fluid to leak out of your ears and you begin to suffer from short term
memory loss and blurred vision. Even when you turn the shower on and pull back
the curtain, Greg is there, soaking wet in full Santa attire, staring into your
soul with a haunted thousand yard stare, smashing that bell until the mirror
cracks. The Gregs of the world, dedicated and professional Santas that they
are, will never eat. They will never sleep. And they will never stop.
Ring-a-ling. Hear them ring.
Lovers of Dickens’s book are absolutely spoiled for choice among the sea of excellent adaptations of the story, especially on film, but also on TV, stage, and in archived radio plays. Being a character who transforms completely from a revoltingly cruel misanthrope to a loving, generous honorary city father, the role is especially difficult to act, and requires the talents of a skilled veteran leading actor. Consequently, the list of actors who have played the part of Scrooge is as diverse as it is impressive. As “A Christmas Carol” is one of the most adapted works of fiction in any medium, in good company with the likes of “Dracula” and “The Three Musketeers,” there’s a Scrooge for every mood, plus a few left over for Mom and Dad and the kids, and even 31 flavors of Scrooge at the ice cream parlor. So it seems that a breakdown of some of the best, worst, and most notable versions of the tale may be helpful.
When watching almost any film version of the book, one notices a remarkable trend that is unique to “A Christmas Carol.” While there are some exceptions, most film and television versions of the story are extraordinarily faithful to the original, with virtually every scene and character intact, as well as nearly all of the dialogue. This is true to such a degree that by about the third or fourth version, you can recite every line of dialogue along with the actors, and get about 90% of it right. Filmmakers over the decades have seemed to operate under an unspoken understanding that the book is much more of a play than a novel, and it is treated as such with absolutely minimal deviation or improvisation.
Disney’s 2009 computer
animated “A Christmas Carol,” directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Jim
Carrey, is my overall pick for the best “classic” adaptation of the novella.
With a stellar cast and budget and production quality far exceeding any other
version to date, the film captures the scope and scale of 1840s London and
Dickens’s extraordinarily rich period detail much better than any other
adaptation. It is also the only film to properly explore the horror and surreal
elements of the story (it is a ghost
story, after all). There are numerous other versions worthy of mention,
including Hallmark Entertainment’s respectable 1999 telefilm with Patrick
Stewart, Disney’s “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” from 1983 (which marked Mickey
Mouse’s first appearance in theaters since 1953, and was nominated for the
Oscar for best animated short film), the hilarious “Rich Little’s Christmas
Carol” from 1978 (with the master impressionist playing 18 different characters),
Rankin/Bass’s “The Stingiest Man in Town” from 1978 (featuring the
appropriately cast Walter Matthau’s perennial sour frown), and the Doctor Who
episode “A Christmas Carol” from 2010 (with Michael Gambon in a truly bonkers
episode featuring flying sharks as Santa’s reindeer, benevolent human
trafficking, and a Stockholm Syndrome ice princess, to name a few).
There are two questionable versions worth a bit more discussion. The first is the TV film “Ebenezer” from 1998, with the story set in the Wild West. Jack Palance was exhumed and rudely awakened from his eternal slumber to play a gruff, rough ‘n’ tough, rootin’-tootin’, gun-totin’, card-cheatin’, stogie-smokin’ Scrooge at the ripe age of 79. He shuffles, winces, naps and mumbles his way through the film at a tortoise pace, and rumor has it that a team of EMTs was on set at all times with defibrillators and syringes full of adrenaline to jumpstart his heart in between takes. He somehow survived another 8 years after making the film. What more can be said about this version other than….it exists? It’s OK, Jack. You’ll always be my number one guy.
The next is “An American Carol” from 2008, directed by parodist David Zucker of “Airplane!” fame. This half-baked lost bet caught on film is a political “satire” version of the story, with Chris Farley’s brother (pretty sure that’s his actual name) as a parody of Michael Moore who openly plots to end July 4th as a holiday and to help Muslim terrorists destroy America (those wascally wabbits, up to their old tricks again!). He is visited by the ghosts of George Washington, George Patton and country superstar Trace Adkins to make him see the error of his ways and become a good person. This film really captures the spirit of Dickens’s original, in that the true meaning of human kindness and goodwill towards man actually lies in being a hyper-partisan hardcore conservative, a fundamentalist Christian, a lover of country music, and a zealous, bellicose and racist nationalist. If you’re a bit confused, it’s because all of those themes were buried deep beneath layer upon layer upon layer of subtext in Dickens’s story, like a literary onion, or a baklava. Buried so deep, in fact, that they’re not even there.
The story has also inspired many stage productions over the decades in America, the UK, and elsewhere, including plays starring Frank Langella, F. Murray Abraham, Tim Curry, Roger Daltry, Jim Broadbent, et al, musicals, and even ballets and operas. Even Dickens’s great-great-grandson, Gerald Charles Dickens, regularly performs the story in a one-man show around the world. In radio, Scrooge has had an impressive run as well, being played by such greats as Michael Gough, Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness, Claude Rains, Orson Welles (he played the role quite well at 23 years old), and most famously, Lionel Barrymore for 18 nearly consecutive years for CBS’s Campbell Playhouse from 1934-53.
And there we have it,
friends. A fairly thorough, if not exhaustive, run-down of the surliest and
iffiest Scrooges to grace the screen, stage, and radio. But wait. “A Christmas
Carol” enthusiasts may have spotted one or two beloved versions, a bit more
liberally adapted from the source material, missing from this survey (while
shaking your heads in disbelief and wishing that I be boiled with my own
pudding and buried with a stake of holly through my heart, no doubt). You may
have noticed that the GREATEST HOLIDAY FILM OF ALL TIME was nowhere to be seen.
Fear not, and stay tuned, dear readers, for…..
The Christmas Curmudgeon’s Guide to the Three Least Heartwarming Versions of 'A Christmas Carol'
And in parting, I offer this bit of holiday wisdom:
Now, more than ever, it is important to remember the true meaning of Christmas…..your life might just depend on it.
The main image features the classic Christmas artwork of Norman Rockwell 1894-1978