• she/her

41, queer trans furry trash, actual professional deer, perpetually tired // mostly 18+ but let’s say entirely 18+ to be safe


bsky
deergrace.bsky.social

Okay, let me tell you why this George C. Scott TV movie (also featuring a young David Warner and Roger Rees as Bob Cratchit and Nephew Fred respectively, as well as a brief Michael Gough appearance as one of the charity solicitors) is one of my favourites.

  • First of all, the fantastically catchy score, based around the leitmotif of an original song (hymn?) "God Bless Us Every One" by songwriting duo/brothers Nick and Tony Bicât. It's sung diegetically by carolers throughout, pointedly, with lyrics needling Scrooge as appropriate for the current scene.

  • You know what, notwithstanding the religious imagery, I just love this piece - it could be a real Christmas carol - so I'm reproducing the lyrics here:

The past of man was cold as ice, he would not mend his ways /
He strove for silver in his heart, and gold in all his days /
His reason weak, his anger sharp, and sorrow all his pay /
He went to church but once a year, and that was Christmas Day

The present man is full of flame, he rushes here and there /
He turns away the orphan child, the widow in her chair /
He takes more than he really needs, forgets how brief his stay /
And stands a-jingling of his coin in church on Christmas Day

So grant us all a change of heart, rejoice for Mary's son /
Pray, Peace on Earth to all mankind, God Bless Us, Every One

The man to come, we do not know, may he make Peace on Earth /
And live the glory of the Word, the message of the birth /
And gather all the children in, to banish their dismay /
Lift up his heart among the bells, in church on Christmas Day

So grant us all a change of heart, rejoice for Mary's son /
Pray, Peace on Earth to all mankind, God Bless Us, Every One
Pray, Peace on Earth to all mankind, God Bless Us, Every One

  • George C. Scott's Scrooge is...different than the usual take. He's very naturalistically just kind of low-key tired and grumpy, like Squidward to Cratchit’s Spongebob. More importantly, he's not wicked; he's just kind of a tedious selfish jerk boss, who's become hardened due to the trauma in his life.
  • Moreover, I’ll say this for George C. Scott: the man could do a good bug-eye.
  • This is also a very good Marley, who’s just doing a standard powdered theatrical spectre, minimal visual effects; the effect of good lighting and stage makeup highlighting the actor’s skeletal gauntness sells it.
  • Christmas Past gets closer than most adaptations to the ethereal, androgynous entity of light from the text; they've got a real David Bowie vibe, like if you collapsed the Thin White Duke, Aladdin Sane and The Man Who Fell To Earth into a single unsettling angelic being. Moreover, they carry the giant dunce cap-looking candle extinguisher from the text, which a manic Scrooge uses at the end of their sequence to banish them, framed much like the original illustration.
  • Christmas Present is aggressively cheerful in a slightly unhinged way - he relishes leering at Scrooge in response to asking if Tiny Tim will live, informing him that he just might be "more worthless and less fit to live than millions" like a poor man's son. (Also, as my girlfriend notes, he's kind of a bear, with the scruff and hairy bare chest through his loose robe.)
  • Similarly, this version invents a scene after visiting Fred's home, of a family spending Christmas Eve under a bridge, making a meager fire - rapidly slipping from the working poor to the destitute - and discussing their options. Scrooge is baffled that they haven't sought help from the civil institutions available to them; he admits he doesn't know anything about the resources on offer, but he pays his taxes to fund them, isn't that enough?
  • ...At which point the spirit presents the filthy feral children of Ignorance and Want from under his robe, and basically threatens Scrooge with socialist revolution? This is where we get the retort of "Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?" spit back at Scrooge bitterly, in perhaps the most satisfying way of any adaptation.
  • Christmas Future's segment is decent, and goes for bleakness rather than the sharper commentary of some adaptations, especially the scene of selling the recently-deceased Scrooge's belongings to the fence Old Joe. (I also really enjoy that the Ghost itself moves around on a hidden dolly in the graveyard scene, all smoothly spooky and inhuman-like!)
  • Finally, redemption is less dramatic for this Scrooge than most, because he was never that much of an actively cruel asshole, just a disinterested centrist utilitarian. It works far better for him to have a change of heart and achieve effective resolution with the people he's wronged, because he's just not that depraved; he doesn't have a body count, unlike some iterations.

FINAL RATING: 8/10. Very competent, and I appreciate George C. Scott's naturalistic portrayal; when he chews the scenery it's a particular inflection on the text, and not just Scrooge's standard mode of being.


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