The film was a follow-up to another Dickens musical adaptation, 1968's award-winning Oliver!. Both films were shot by Oswald Morris and many of the sets at Shepperton Studios were reused for Scrooge.[2] The posters for Scrooge included the tagline, "What the dickens have they done to Scrooge?", designed to head off any criticism of an all-singing, all-dancing old skinflint.[3] Finney won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy in 1971, and the film received four Academy Award nominations, including for Best Original Song (for "Thank You Very Much").
Plot
On Christmas Eve 1860, in London, Ebenezer Scrooge, a mean-spirited, stingy, sour money-lender does not share the merriment of Christmas. He declines his nephew Harry's invitation for Christmas dinner and reluctantly gives his loyal employee Bob Cratchit Christmas Day off. Cratchit meets up with his ill son Tiny Tim and daughter Kathy to go shopping and return to the rest of the family at home to prepare for the holiday ("Christmas Children"). As Scrooge leaves his office, he declines two gentlemen's offer to collect money for charity and visits some of his clients, including Tom Jenkins ("I Hate People"). He is accosted and mocked by street urchins ("Father Christmas"). Returning home, Scrooge encounters the ghost of his seven-year-dead business partner Jacob Marley, who warns him to repent his miserly ways or he will be condemned in the afterlife as he was, carrying a heavy chain forged by his own selfishness and greed ("See the Phantoms"). Before leaving, Marley informs him that three spirits will visit him tonight.
At one o'clock, Scrooge is visited by the Victorian Ghost of Christmas Past, who takes him back in time to his childhood and early adult life. They visit his lonely school days, where he is ultimately taken back home by his beloved sister, and then his time as an employee under Mr. Fezziwig. At a Christmas party held by Fezziwig ("December the 25th"), Scrooge falls in love with Fezziwig's daughter, Isabel ("Happiness"). However, the spirit shows Scrooge how Isabel left him when he chose money over her ("You..."). He asks the spirit to remove him as he finds himself back in his bed.
At two o'clock, Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present, a jolly giant who teaches him the joys and wonder of Christmas Day ("I Like Life"). Scrooge and the spirit visit Bob's house to observe the family's Christmas dinner, while Scrooge shows interest in the ill Tim ("The Beautiful Day"). The spirit hints that Tiny Tim might die. They next visit Harry's Christmas party, where Harry defends his uncle from his guests' snide remarks, hoping to know a better side to him and to raise Cratchit's wages. Scrooge observes the party and games. Before the spirit vanishes, he returns Scrooge home and cautions him to make the most out of his short life. Scrooge again finds himself back in his bed.
At three o'clock, Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, a silent, cloaked figure who shows him the future Christmas 1861, with the citizens rejoicing at the death of Scrooge ("Thank You Very Much"), who is unaware of the reason they are celebrating, having his back turned when they start parading his coffin. The spirit points Scrooge to Bob's house, and he sees the Crachit family in mourning and that Tiny Tim and Bob are absent. Enquiring for clarification, Scrooge is taken to a cemetery, where he sees Bob mourning at Tim's grave. When Bob leaves, the ghost then points out Scrooge's own grave. A horrified Scrooge promises to change his ways as the grave opens and the spirit reveals its Grim Reaper-esque skull and fingers, causing the startled Ebenezer to fall through his grave into the caverns of Hell. There, Marley shows him to his frigid, ice-bound "office", where he will be "the only man in Hell who's chilly" to serve as Lucifer's personal clerk for his treatment of Bob Cratchit (just as Scrooge had forced Cratchit to work in a cold office). Scrooge is adorned with a enormous large chain made from his lifetime of past sins by four masked demons and strains against the chains, crying out for mercy, before he wakes up in his bedroom.
Despite having lost his nightcap in Hell, a gleeful Scrooge vows to make amends ("I'll Begin Again"). Finding it's Christmas Day, he decides to bring happiness to the citizens of London and goes on a shopping spree, buying food and presents, with the help of children. He runs into Harry and his wife and also gives them some presents to make up for missing his time with them, then gladly accepts their invitation to Christmas dinner. Dressed as "Father Christmas", Scrooge then delivers a giant turkey, presents and toys to the Cratchits and, upon making his identity known, promises to double Bob's salary and that they will work to find the best doctors to make Tim better. Scrooge then frees Tom and his clients from their debts and tells the charity gentlemen he earlier spurned that he will donate a sizable amount of money ("Thank You Very Much (Reprise)"). Scrooge returns home, acknowledging Marley for helping him get a second chance at life, and goes inside to prepare for dinner with his family.
"Christmas Children" – David Collings, Richard Beaumont, & Karen Scargill
"I Hate People" – Albert Finney
"Father Christmas" – Urchins
"See the Phantoms" – Alec Guinness
"December the 25th" – Laurence Naismith, Kay Walsh & Ensemble
"Happiness" – Suzanne Neve
"A Christmas Carol (Reprise)" – Chorus
"You...You" – Albert Finney
"I Like Life" – Kenneth More & Albert Finney
"The Beautiful Day" – Richard Beaumont
"Happiness (Reprise)" – Suzanne Neve & Albert Finney
"Thank You Very Much" – Anton Rodgers & Ensemble
"I'll Begin Again" – Albert Finney
"I Like Life (Reprise)" – Albert Finney
Finale: "Father Christmas (Reprise)" / "Thank You Very Much (Reprise)" – All
"Exit Music" (not included on LP)
A soundtrack album containing all of the songs from the film was issued on Columbia Records in 1970. The album peaked at No. 29 on Billboard's Best Bets For Christmas album chart on December 19, 1970.[4] Due to legal complications, however, the soundtrack has never been re-released in the CD format. The current Paramount Blu-ray release of the film has removed the Overture (which is intact on all VHS and DVD releases).
Title sequence
The film features an opening title sequence of numerous hand-painted backgrounds and overlays by British illustrator Ronald Searle. Art of the Title described it, saying, "As is often the case with Searle’s illustrations, the forms jump and squiggle into shape, the strokes loose and sprightly. In each scene, swaths of colour and life pour out, white snowflakes dotting the brush strokes."[5] The illustrations later appeared in the book Scrooge by Elaine Donaldson, published in 1970 by Cinema Center Films.
Production
Filmed in London and on location in Buckinghamshire between January and May 1970, the film sets at Shepperton Studios included fully reconstructed Victorian streets.[3] Finney was in his mid-thirties and wore makeup to look older and was able to draw effectively upon his theatrical training and incorporate various vocal inflections and physical mannerisms as the old miser.[6]
Reception
Box office
Scrooge opened on two screens in Los Angeles and Chicago, grossing $36,000 in its opening week.[7][8] The release expanded two weeks later, including an opening at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, and moved up to second place at the US box office behind Lovers and Other Strangers.[9] The following week it became number one but again fell to second place behind Lovers and Other Strangers for one week before returning to number one for two weeks before Christmas.[10][11][12] In its sixth week at Radio City Music Hall it grossed $375,095 for the week, which Variety believed to be the biggest ever single week gross for a theatre worldwide surpassing the record set the previous Christmas by A Boy Named Charlie Brown.[13] Over the course of its initial theatrical release, the film earned $3 million in distributor rentals in the United States and Canada.[14]
Critical reception
Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune awarded the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, praising Finney's "masterful performance".[15] Arthur D. Murphy, reviewing for Variety, called Scrooge "a most delightful film in every way" and praised Finney as "remarkable", and also complimented Bricusse's "unobtrusive complementary music and lyrics; and Ronald Neame's delicately controlled direction which conveys, but does not force, all the inherent warmth, humor and sentimentality."[16]Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times applauded Scrooge as a "lovely movie, one of the few genuinely family-wide attractions of the whole year, calculated to please equally all those who have loved the Dickens work forever, and all those enviable youngsters who are about to discover it for the first time."[17]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, feeling it "works very nicely on its intended level and the kids sitting near me seemed to be having a good time." However, he was critical of Bricusse's songs, writing that they "fall so far below the level of good musical comedy that you wish Albert Finney would stop singing them, until you realize he isn't really singing."[18] Reviewing for the New York Daily News, Ann Guarino wrote Scrooge was "bright with humor and moves along at a lively pace in 19th Century settings." She further praised the cast as "excellent," but described Bricusse's songs as being "pleasant, but unfortunately forgettable with the exception of 'Thank You Very Much'".[19]Vincent Canby of The New York Times called Finney's performance "absurd, sentimental, pretty, never quite as funny as it intends to be, but quite acceptable, if only as a seasonal ritual." Overall, Canby felt the adaptation was "surprisingly faithful", and he complemented Ronald Neame for directing "the movie with all of the delicacy possible after a small story has been turned into a comparatively large, conventional musical. The settings—London streets and interiors, circa 1860 (updated from the original 1843)—are very attractive, somewhat spruced-up variations on the original John Leech illustrations."[20]
Pauline Kael, writing in The New Yorker, found Scrooge to be an "innocuous musical version of A Christmas Carol, starring Albert Finney looking glum. The Leslie Bricusse music is so forgettable that your mind flushes it away while you're hearing it."[21]Jay Cocks of Time magazine derided Finney's performance as "drastically disappointing. [He] grumbles and hobbles through his part, employing mannerism instead of nuance." Cocks was also critical of Bricusse's songs, and summarized the film as "a high-budget holiday spectacular, a musical extracted from Dickens' A Christmas Carol that turns out to be a curdled cup of holiday cheer [...] First frame to last, Scrooge is a mechanical movie made with indifference to every quality but the box office receipts."[22]
Author Fred Guida called it one of the most underrated adaptions of the book.[6]
Accolades
The film was nominated for best original song score, and "Thank You Very Much" for best original song, though it failed to win in either category. It also received nominations, but no oscars, for art direction/set decoration and costume design.[6]
In 1992, a stage musical adapted from the film, featuring Bricusse's songs and starring Anthony Newley, was mounted in the UK under the title Scrooge: The Musical. "I Hate People" was re-written as "I Hate Christmas", and a cast recording was released.[25]
The show was revived in 2003 on a tour of the UK by British song and dance man Tommy Steele, and he reprised the role at the London Palladium in 2004, making him the performer to have done the most shows at the Palladium. In 2007, Shane Ritchie played the part at the Manchester Palace. The musical was revived at London Palladium in October 2012 with Steele again playing the title role in a run that lasted until 5 January 2013.[26]
The stage adaptation was mounted in Melbourne, Australia, in 1993, starring Keith Michell, Max Gillies, Tony Taylor, William Zappa, Dale Burridge, Emma Raciti, Ross Hannaford, Paul Cheyne, and Glenda Walsh.
Animated version
In December 2022, following a limited theatrical release in the United States that began on November 18, an animated remake of the film, titled Scrooge: A Christmas Carol, was released by Netflix.[27] Produced by Timeless Films (the team behind the Monster Family films) and written and directed by Stephen Donnelly, the remake incorporates many of Leslie Bricusse's songs from the 1970 film, but has a newly-written book.[28] The remake features the vocal talents of Luke Evans as Scrooge, Johnny Flynn as Bob Cratchit, Fra Fee as Harry, Giles Terera as Tom, Olivia Colman as the Ghost of Christmas Past, James Cosmo as Fezziwig, Jessie Buckley as Isabel, Trevor Dion Nicholas as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Jonathan Pryce as Jacob Marley.[29]
