The Covetous Old Sinner

A Christmas Eve redemption of a paper I wrote in grad school

Growing up, our most cherished Christas tradition was to order pizza on Christas Eve, and watch Scrooge, the 1951 adaptation of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” starring Alastair Sim.

It wasn’t until many years later that I came to understand how definitive this adaptation is, set against the literally countless others that came before and since. As a graduate student studying screenwriting, I decided to write a paper about this film in a class dedicated to adaptations.

Last year, I considered pulling it out of the archive and sharing it here, but I was too embarrassed by weaknesses that were nakedly apparent to me a decade later. If I was going to share it, I would have to do some rewriting, and I didn’t have time.

This year, and at the request of my dear mother, who first introduced me to this masterpiece as a child, I made the time.

The Covetous Old Sinner

According to the unimpeachable Wikipedia, Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” has seen 49 theater, 27 film, and 25 television adaptations. This is not counting the animated, radio, opera, and graphic novel adaptations, or parodies and other stories that borrow heavily from the basic Ghosts of Christmas plot Dickens devised.

And they just keep coming. It is basically a guarantee that someone, somewhere will pen a new adaptation of this classic novella every year.

But the one I grew up on, and the one I still watch every year, was released to mixed reviews all the way back in 1951.

And I’m not alone. Do some Googling, and you’ll find no shortage of apologists for this as the definitive adaptation.

Much of the credit for this goes to Alastair Sim. Already well-known for his comedic roles, Sim gives Scrooge a menacing subtlety the character deserves but rarely gets. But a great performance can only get you so far without a great script, and there are some special things going on in this one.

Dickens’ story turns entirely upon the conceit that a truly despicable man can be redeemed. This redemption is a Christmas miracle, as it were, because this man is not absolved of his ugly character. Indeed, he, of himself, rises up, shakes it off and becomes, in a way that is distinctly Christian (appropriately, for the season and subject) converted to a new and charitable self.

In the novella, the redemption of an irredeemable man is accomplished primarily through Dickens’ unendingly elegant prose, and his almost gratuitous description of character. Consider the following introduction to the infamous Ebenezer Scrooge:

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self- contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.

Three New Scenes

In adapting Dickens’ story for the screen, Noel Langley (the screenwriter) boldly grafts in entire sequences that are barely mentioned in the literary source. That none of this material feels out of place, or tonally at odds with Dickens’ original voice, is a testament to Langley’s skill. All of the new scenes are so aligned with Dickens’ style, including the wry sense of humor for which he is so famous, that anyone unfamiliar with the actual novella will be surprised to discover that Dickens himself didn’t author them.

I’ll focus on three examples, each of which involve Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s late business partner, as well as the ghostly herald of the spirits that will visit him later.

But first, for context, I’ll point out that in the novella, Marley is significant only as that harbinger of future visitations. Beyond that, Dickens includes only vague inferences to their earlier relationship.

In the film, however, there are three crucial scenes that provide Marley with much greater dramatic weight.

#1 - Fast Friends

The first is the scene of their first meeting, during which they agree upon matters of worldly concern, and find in one another a kinship of cynical perspective.

Why is this important? On the surface, it shows that Scrooge and Marley were similar in personality and character, and that they met in their youth. But if you’re paying attention, it is clear that both of them were also caught up in something of an industrial-capitalist movement, both of them recent converts to the god of “business.”

Crucially, this means that they were not unique. As horrible as Scrooge is, Dickens intended (and Langley understood), that he is not only archetypal, but common. Walking his path, filling his shoes, inhabiting his perspective, are the countless acolytes of industry, all those who worship the almighty pound (dollar).

#2 - Spiders in Wait

Two scenes later, the Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge (and us) the moment they mutually connive to buy out a struggling company. This is perhaps the most commanding example of their depravity, if only for its subtlety and restraint.

Here, we find two men sitting quietly, biding their time like spiders as they watch the other men in the room come unglued. Eventually, they set their trap, then lean back with satisfaction to watch it spring. Marley speaks no words, Scrooge speaks few. It is their demeanor that betrays the satisfaction of their black hearts.

But what’s so wrong with executing a shrewd business maneuver? we may ask. Perhaps our own black hearts are betrayed in the asking.

#3 - Hours of Business

Directly after that scene, in which Scrooge and Marley are clearly BFFs, we find Scrooge in his office, briefly interrupted from his single-minded work by Marley’s housekeeper. She wants him to know that his friend is on his deathbed, and that if he wants to say goodbye, he’d better come now.

But it’s 5pm, and the business day doesn’t end until 7pm.

Recoiling a bit at Scrooge’s cold refusal to leave his office two hours early, the housekeeper says she’ll encourage him to hold out till then.

When Scrooge finally arrives at his best friend’s bedside, it is in time to witness his last breath, which he literally uses in an attempt to warn Scrooge of their mutual folly. Scrooge, disturbed a little by the distasteful awkwardness of death, but otherwise unmoved, hesitates not one moment before signing all of Jacob Marleyʼs property over to himself.

In witness of that action, the Ghost quotes Dickens almost directly, exclaiming, “Look at your face, Ebenezer, the face of a wrenching, grasping, scraping, covetous old sinner.”

Unsoftened Ugliness

While we understand the circumstances that motivated all of Scrooge’s actions, we also see that Scrooge was ultimately responsible for all of his choices, and how, in every pivotal moment, he could have made better ones. In other words, the film refuses to soften the ugliness of his soul, and he and we are shocked by the horror of it.

In order for this story to do its job, the audience must be convinced of Scroogeʼs total corruption, else his later redemption lose its potency. And since we experience this contrast through our bitter protagonist, he must also be convinced. Which brings me to one of the more poignant moments in the 1951 adaptation.

In his initial confrontation with the Ghost of Christmas Future, a terrifying specter, Scrooge cries, “Even in my fear I must tell you...I am too old, I cannot change....”

Stripped of all his pretenses, Scrooge utters this in raw honesty. He dreads what is coming, but feels helpless and hopeless. The Ghost, however, does not answer this desperation with comfort. Instead, he reveals the dismal and unflinching revelation of the future.

While all of this is embedded in the prose of Dickens’ original novella, the medium of film can offer a uniquely succinct vibrancy. Watching an old man wail in despair has the necessary effect. The grace of this story is manifested in the characterʼs changed heart.

The Calculus of Grace

What other adaptations (maybe all of them) fail to understand is that the deep wisdom Dickens’ story offers is not that a manʼs heart may be changed from selfishness to charity, or from despair to hope. It is rather that an irredeemable man may be redeemed by the grace of total self-revelation.

In the year of the filmʼs U.S. release, New York Times critic Bosley Crowther extolled “this rendition of Dickens' sometimes misunderstood "Carol" [as] an accurate comprehension of the agony of a shabby soul.”

And this is presented not only in the tortured aspects of Mr. Sim but in the phantasmagoric creation of a somber and chilly atmosphere. These, set against the exhibition of conventional manifests of love and cheer, do right by the moral of Dickens…

It is the extreme contrast that endows this story with such power.

So many adaptations have portrayed Scrooge as a grumpy old man with a hidden soft spot that needs uncovering. But on the page, and then on the screen in 1951, he was a damned soul, hardened into a monster of avarice by age and effort.

The miracle is not the uncovering of some secret softness, but the breaking of a hard heart upon the uncompromising stones of mercy.

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Merry Christmas, friends.