Video versions of A Christmas Carol are so ubiquitous today, especially on television around the holiday season, that it may be surprising to learn that film studios at first resisted making any.

Throughout the silent era, only shorts—mainly 15 minutes or less—were based on Dickens' beloved story. Even in the early sound years when classic adaptations were being cranked out, the seasonal theme of A Christmas Carol was a hard sell, due to the slow distribution system then, which would allow such a film to be shown in only a few major cities before the season passed.

It was not until 1935 that the Brits committed a full-length adaptation of A Christmas Carol to film.

Scrooge-lite
That first big North American production was MGM's 1938 A Christmas Carol, made in trepidation that it wouldn't have legs. But it turned out to be a big hit and, ever since, producers have never stopped making holiday-themed fare every year.

MGM made the story as palatable as possible to the general public. It's lighter and more cheerful than most later takes. Veteran character actor Reginald Owen stepped in to replace a sick Lionel Barrymore in the Ebenezer Scrooge role—and he is very good in a stately and restrained manner, overcoming his corny old-man makeup with its too-obvious bald wig and paste-on eyebrows.

The script however never really lets us see what turned the neglected little boy into the archetypical cynic. The Spirit of Christmas Past (18-year-old Ann Rutherford on her way to becoming a major Hollywood star) never shows Scrooge's early money grubbing nor his ill-fated romance as a young man. With the film running barely 70 minutes, his conversion to crank and eventually to good fellow are both too quick.

A pathos-enhancing innovation though is to have Bob Cratchit actually fired—for unintentionally knocking Scrooge's hat off with a snowball. Cratchit, played by Gene Lockhart, is afraid to spoil Christmas by telling his wife, played by real-life spouse Kathleen Lockhart. (The acting family is completed with a Cratchit daughter played without credit by their real-life child June Lockhart, in her debut before going on to become a movie and television mainstay, starring in the Lassie and Lost in Space series and appearing on screen well into her eighties.)

Child actor Terry Kilburn drew praise for his cheery Tiny Tim but today he seems too precious, even creepy. And Scrooge's nephew Fred (Barry MacKay) is just too good-natured—why does he bother keeping up with the insufferably rotten Scrooge?

Even the shade of Scrooge's long-dead partner, Marley, is not so scary. He's on screen for a only a few moments and the stalwart Leo G. Carroll plays him as if about to fall asleep forever (although the special effects are pretty good for the time).

The religious aspect, not a big part of Dickens' work, is also emphasized wherever possible.

The biggest disappointment for Christmas Carol lovers though may be that the morning-after scene in the office, when Scrooge surprises Cratchit with his new disposition, is dispensed with. Instead the former miser delivers the turkey himself to the Cratchit family for the big revelation at their house. But then we need this scene, don't we? Since he'd previously fired Cratchit, there could be no at-work reconciliation. In my view it works well here, though some disagree.

Overall the film is brighter than most versions. Although the setting is still pre-Victorian London, many aspects seem characteristic of American costume films in the 1930s—the sets, like Scrooge's mansion or his boyhood school are so big, airy and grandiose. But still A Christmas Carol is an honest and entertaining first effort.

Beloved Scrooge
It took the Brits to really get it right. The 1951 adaptation, Scrooge (called A Christmas Carol in the United States), is the beloved version everyone has seen a couple of times at least.

It also made academic and comedic actor Alastair Sim into a beloved figure for his wonderfully lively, moving performance. It is hard to describe the depth of his performance that allows us to accept without question the transitions from cruelty to fear to recalcitrance to repentance to joyful silliness. Few could watch the last few minutes of Scrooge without tearing up and giggling at the same time.

The film gives him and the other actors time (about an hour and a half) to develop their characters more. We see Scrooge grow into the monster he becomes alongside Marley (the also great Michael Hordern in a beefed-up role) in business and with his long-suffering fiancée in private life.

The Cratchits are still sentimentally portrayed but not cloyingly so—led by character actor Mervyn Johns as a sincere, but deeply feeling, Bob Cratchit.

The cinematography is brilliant. Black and white has seldom been used so effectively in filmmaking outside the American film-noir crime classics. London is dark and cramped and Scrooge's home is dinghy and full of shadows. Camera angles accentuate the feeling of doom in the early and middle going and then open up for the joyous finale.

(Beware the colourized version of this film. Why oh why would they ruin such a masterpiece in this way? Presumably to curry favour with youngsters who won't watch anything so old that it's black and white. But the pastel backgrounds, the colourful clothes worn by Scrooge and the others, the overall bright lighting of the coloured film—they just wash the drama from this classic.)

This is the Christmas Carol—and the Scrooge—that all since have measured themselves against.

A human Scrooge
George C. Scott is probably the finest actor to assay the role of Ebenezer Scrooge and he brings an entirely different dimension to the character.

The 1984 adaptation of A Christmas Carol was shot in England for TV, directed by Clive Donner, who had worked as a young editor on the 1951 Scrooge. The special effects are nothing special—the ghostly apparitions are no more sophisticated than those in films decades earlier—but 19th-century London is evoked realistically in sombre colour.

However, it is the subtle acting of the American Scott that makes this version unusual. I'm not saying he makes the best Scrooge or he makes this film the best—but he makes it one of the most interesting.

The most unsettling even. For this Scrooge is not a caricature. He's a real man, and that can be upsetting. For the most part Scott is low key. He plays the old miser as a regular person set in his ways would respond to what's happening about him. We can see in his face and small gestures that he's considering what he's shown, giving in on some points, dismissing others, being seduced by some scenes of jollity or hardship, closing his mind against others—without saying much at all. And when he does speak, it's offhand, as we all speak in real life. This may be annoying to viewers who await the declamation of famous lines only to have them tossed off as if unthinkingly. But it humanizes Scrooge, so that we sympathize with him long before his reformation. And when the fireworks do come, they are all the more forceful because of the calm before. Scott is an actor who always comes across as containing a deep fury within himself and it works here to create a volatile Scrooge.

One of the oddest scenes is actually the reconciliation with nephew Fred (Roger Rees) and his wife (Caroline Langrishe). It occurs not at a party, as in other films, but with the three characters only. After Scrooge makes his apologies for past behaviour, they all profess happiness at their new-found togetherness. But the actors play the scene so realistically, with the awkwardness that would naturally ensue, that we don't get the anticipated release. That comes only with the final at-work scene with Scrooge and Cratchit, when Scott lets his barely containable joy show through.

Cratchit however is miscast. The worthy David Warner is too big and too hard (and perhaps too well-known for his villainous roles in other movies) to be believable as the meek and loving family man.

An interesting bit of casting though is Edward Woodward as Christmas Present. This spirit is usually the image of joviality, close to the modern icon of Santa Claus, until he takes a turn for seriousness near the end of his reign and turns Scrooge over to the doom-saying ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. But Woodward, made to appear gigantic, has a sharp edge and engages in a gibing battle of wits with Scrooge almost from the beginning.

Also this is the only version of A Christmas Carol I can think of in which we get to meet Scrooge's father, who turns out—contrary to  most renditions and Dickens' own text—to have remained harsh towards young Ebenezer. This makes more sense in explaining Scrooge's development into such a harsh figure himself.

All in all, this is a film adaptation of A Christmas Carol to watch after seeing one of more of the earlier versions in order to appreciate the different twists.

More Scrooges than you shake a shtick at
Many other adaptations of Dickens' story have been made—I can count over 50—and more are probably being made as we speak. There's even one that features nothing but dogs, and every figure in popular culture seems to offer their own twist on the story: The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Flintstones'..., Mr. Magoo's....

But here's a small selection from among the more noteworthy video presentations:

• The animated 1997 version of A Christmas Carol isn't as bad as you might expect after watching for a few minutes. Yes, it uses a rather flat cartoon style, reminiscent of old Saturday-morning kids TV, and it wastes some time with some cartoonish episodes, such as Scrooge interacting with a comical bulldog, added as his constant companion, and a ridiculous bit involving a mouse in Scrooge's office. And there are three or four goofy songs—the most over-the-top and catchy being "Santa's Sooty Suit". But the story is told as well and as completely as in some of the live-action flicks and the actors providing the voices are first-rate: Tim Curry as Scrooge, Michael York as Bob Cratchit and Ed Asner as Marley. Whoopi Goldberg does a weird, unrecognizable turn as the voice of Christmas Present—a black woman with a put-on British accent who ages before our eyes. The film works despite some of the above caveats. The reformation scene at the end is especially effective. Nothing spectacular but I imagine young kids would appreciate this animated film while adults could stand to sit through it.

• Scrooged (1988) is said to be "suggested" by the Dickens story. If anything, it's an updating—from early nineteenth-century British to late twentieth-century America. Comic actor Bill Murray is TV executive Frank Cross whose station is producing a live version of A Christmas Carol. He's a cynical bastard himself and, in a parallel characterization to Scrooge's, he doesn't get the Christmas spirit either. That is, until he's visited by them. Though they aren't quite the spirits Dickens envisioned. All the characters are funny, while behaving quite normally for the situation. And, although the film is a take-off on A Christmas Carol, it follows the same storyline and concludes with the same uplifting message.

• When you've had enough uplifting Dickens, you may need a dose of the misanthropic antidote: Blackadder's Christmas Carol (1988). It's only 48 minutes and made for TV, but it's a hoot. British comic actor Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) revives his cult-favourite series Blackadder on the same-named cynics who span the centuries. This time he focuses on Ebenezer Blackadder in 19th-century London. But the twist on Dickens is that this Ebenezer is the opposite of Scrooge. He starts out on Christmas Eve as a kindly man who gives generously to all, until visiting spirits, showing him the lives of his family members past and future, convince him he'll have a better life if he turns evil. Most of the Blackadder characters, including Tony Robinson as Baldrick, Hugh Laurie as the Prince Regent George, Stephen Fry as Lord Melchett, and Miranda Richardson as Queen Elizabeth I are back for the fun.