My favorite pastime of the holiday season is arguing over the greatest Christmas movie of all time. The conventional choice is Frank Capra's classic ""It's a Wonderful Life."" There's just no arguing with Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed and the theme of ""No man is poor who has friends.""
Then there is ""Home Alone,"" a movie that blessed my childhood (and probably yours) with memorable catch-phrases like ""Merry Christmas, you filthy animal!""
But ultimately, the movie that best explores the true values of Christmas has to be the 1951 British version of the Charles Dickens novella ""A Christmas Carol.""
Scottish comedian Alistair Sim gives an unforgettable performance as Ebenezer Scrooge, the stingy old miser who embraces Christmas after being visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve.
Unlike other film adaptations of this story, this version does not portray Scrooge as a grouchy, one-dimensional stock character. Instead, it explores what made him the way he is. There are shades of ""Citizen Kane"" in the way traumatic events in Scrooge's early life affect his later, hard-hearted view of the world.
We see him give up happiness as a poor but content clerk in favor of money and advancement working with Jacob Marley for a larger, more ruthless and corrupt company. In the process, he grows richer and richer but does nothing to help the poor and destitute of London. In one scene, when two men from a charity come by his office on Christmas Eve collecting money for the poor, Scrooge asks coldly, ""Why? Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?""
Later, when Scrooge tells Marley's ghost that he shouldn't be ashamed for having been a good man of business, Marley cries, ""Business?! Mankind was my business! Their common welfare was my business!"" The message about the callous disregard of the rich for the poor could not be clearer.
With the Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge visits the household of his clerk, Bob Cratchit, whose meager income can barely support his crippled son, Tiny Tim. Nevertheless, the impoverished family manages to have a happy Christmas dinner.
Scrooge sees that the spirit of kindness and love is not present in their hearts only on Christmas day, but on all 365 days of the year. It is a lesson on how selfishness and cutting one's self off from the world leads to ignorance, and how that ignorance damages the world.
The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows Scrooge what will happen if he doesn't change his ways. Tiny Tim will die, and Scrooge will end up like Marley, roaming the earth wearing a heavy chain of his own making and observing the human suffering that he could have prevented in life but no longer can.
This movie is the only adaptation that preserves the terror and harder edges of the Dickens novella. But it also keeps the focus on what Christmas is really about: kindness and mercy to one's fellow man, engagement with the common good of the world and, in Scrooge's case, the possibility for redemption and forgiveness.
It warns of the dangers of greed and ignorance, and it suggests, as Capra does as well, that perhaps wealth is not measured by dollars but by the happiness and love around us which we can choose either to embrace or to shun.
The movie features a magnificent supporting cast, perfect Victorian-era detail and a hauntingly beautiful musical score to the tune of the English folk song ""Barbara Allen."" The final scene where the reformed Scrooge pretends to be his old, dour self to Cratchit before breaking down into uncontrollable giggles is priceless.
Finally, the last narration is memorable: ""Scrooge was better than his word. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old city ever knew. And to Tiny Tim, who lived and got well again, he was like a second father.
And it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed: God bless us, everyone!""
Here here.
