A Christmas Carol

There must be about 485232048 movie and TV versions of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". I am frankly not a fan of most of these versions because they often feel the same and there isn't much to distinguish them. There are a few exceptions, such as the 1984 made for TV version with George C. Scott (it's probably the best version you can find...and closest to Dickens' vision) and "A Muppet Christmas Carol"...but most of the rest just seem, well, lazy. Despite my misgivings, I decided to watch this 1954 made for TV version starring Frederic March...mostly because I really like March as an actor.

The first thing I noticed as I watched was how rushed the production felt. At only 49 minutes, it cannot help but feel rushed. This is especially odd since the music takes up a lot of time...such as several LONG musical number that seems to do nothing to further the story. The second thing I noticed is that the film looks amazingly good for TV at that time. The costumes are nice and the sets are terrific...far better than you'd expect for a TV production in 1954. Apart from these two things, the show is essentially a sped up version--giving us many of the famous and familiar lines from the story.

So is it worth seeing? Perhaps...if you are the type person who isn't a bit tired of the many, many versions of the story. It also is great if you want to see "A Christmas Carol" but have a limited attention span. Or, if like me, you love Frederic March and don't mind seeing an okay version simply because he stars in it.

I would give this one a 7, which is respectable. However, after thinking about it, I reduced it to 6 simply because it was rushed and the singing was really distracting.

This 1954 black & white version of A Christmas Carol is brief at 54 minutes. Not quite a musical, but a heavy emphasis on music & singing from start to finish. The unique feature of this interpretation is the ghosts of Christmas Past & Present are personified by people close to Scrooge in his life. The ghost of Christmas Future doesn't appear at all, but instead Scrooge is told to look within himself. The video & audio quality is as expected for this nearly 70 year old film. If you need A Christmas Carol fix but want to take it in under an hour, this version is for you.

A Christmas Carol (1954) is a movie that I recently watched on Amazon Prime as part of their IMDB collection. The storyline stays fairly true to the classic Charles Dickens storyline. I did like how Scrooge was portrayed and he was definitely well written and more light hearted and comical than other renditions. There was some fun riddles and banter throughout the film. The ghosts in this are really solid and I loved the use of crows to segue into the ghost of Christmas future. The ending could have been better than just having the camera focusing on Scrooge's face as he listened to the song until the credits rolled.

This movie is directed by Ralph Levy (I Love Lucy) and stars Fredric March (Inherit the Wind), Bob Sweeney (Hawaii Five-0), Queenie Leonard (And Then There Were None), Basil Rathbone (The Adventures of Robin Hood) and Sally Fraser (The Spider).

Overall this wasn't perfect but it was a fun and entertaining version of A Christmas Carol. March was a great Scrooge. I would score this a 6.5-7/10 and recommend seeing it once.