Here's the second TV presentation, not much better than 1949's though. I'm writing this a coupled days after watching it and it's hard to remember much to say. And not just because my life currently is a dizzying blur of black and white Victorian grumps and crippled kids, it's just incredibly bland. All I recollect very clearly are the bad points.
Number one, it's called a musical adaptation, but the musical aspect here is just random breaks in the story so we can watch a choir on a London street sing a random carol for 4 minutes. or watch Scrooge and Belle stop the show to sing a song to the camera like we're watching a Bing Crosby special. I'm not sure if diagetic is the right snooty, filmy-type word I'm looking for...but it's not a musical in the sense of characters singing about their inner thoughts or a Greek chorus providing exposition. It's just characters in a show singing songs sometime. Total waste of time. It's dumb. So naturally, the whole thing feels very rushed and unfulfilling.
Oh, and besides wasting precious airtime on songs, since this was on TV, there's a Chrysler commercial in the middle of the show where they sincerely try to force a meaningful connection between the story and why you should rush out and order a car in time for Christmas.
Scrooge is kinda okay in this, so I won't banish it all the way down,
Watch it on YouTube
- A Christmas Carol (1951)
- A Christmas Carol (1938)
- Scrooge (1935)
- A Christmas Carol (1910)
- Shower of Stars: A Christmas Carol (1954)
- Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost (1901)
- The Christmas Carol (1949)
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