Name Professor Institution Date A Christmas Carol A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles dickens first published by Chapman and Hall on 19 December 1843 and adapted for film in 1938. The film tells the story of bitter old miserly protagonist Ebenezer scrooge who does not give to others and is only concerned with his own money and affairs. The film tells of his transformation resulting from ghost visits by Jacob Marley and the ghosts of Christmases’ past, present and future.
As the years go by, he holds true to his promise and honors Christmas with all his heart. The film is set in the mid-1900s with the introduction of industrial revolution that resulted in inventions such as machines. The production of the film has an interesting regeneration of the story’s familiar characters. A distinguished and beloved actor plays old miserly Scrooge and the Tiny Tim character is just but sweetness personified. Cheerful, wonderful comics and perfect melancholic figures took up the roles of lesser characters and for the ghosts.
On Christmas Eve, his nephew, Fred, who invites him to dinner with him and his fiancee, visits miserly old Ebenezer scrooge. Scrooge refuses as he considers Christmas as nonsense and although he gives his clerk, Bob Cratchit the day off, he sacks him on the spot later when bob mistakenly pelts him with a snowball. Bob buys his family the Christmas food they hoped spending the last of his wages. As the cratchits and Fred enjoy Christmas Eve, Scrooge goes to his empty house where ghost of Marley, his late partner, visits him.
In the Christmas Eve, the chained ghost of Marley who passed on several years ago visits him and tells him that three ghosts will visit him that night visits Scrooge. When the ghosts do come, Scrooge is shown his past, the present and yet to come which includes his own death and that of Tim. The first ghost, the spirit of Christmas past, recalls his happy childhood and his that forged his character; the spirit of Christmas present shows him how many currently celebrate; the last, spirit of Christmas yet to come shows his fate.
The spirits complete their visits in one night and give him the opportunity to change his ways and become charitable and loving. The film is mainly a story of ghosts-of nightmare conceits and shuddering horrors. For example, the visions of scrooge’s life story are sights into depressing realms and the trait of poverty and ignorance in the nineteenth century England seen as normal. The movie does not conceal the playwrights’ suggestions of human meanness with an artificial gloss.
When old Marley’s ghost comes clomping into Scrooge’s chambers in the dead of the night, it is with terrible rustling of cere-cloth and rattling of disciplinary chains. There is no visualization of the usual commencements of Christmas in this picture to any degree. The Cratchit’s gay nature is on a modest scale and in the home of Fred, joyfulness rather than feast is obvious. Snow is in abundance and the background music of Richard Addinsell is full of interruptions of familiar Christmas songs. However, it is full of heavy discords and harsh sounds of despair.
When the ghostly visions appear, it is a bit on the overpowering side. Evident in this movie sometimes misunderstood ‘Carol’ is an accurate comprehension of the agony of a scruffy soul. This, not only presented in the tortured aspects of Mr. Sim, but also in the creation of a somber and chilly atmosphere. These do right by the moral of the playwright and comprehend both an incisive and inspiring Christmas show. The movie did not cover all the aspects, as some bits of the story were unmentioned or unseen in order to make it a family film and to accommodate a reasonable runtime.
A major change made in this film is the arrival of the ghosts. This greatly differs from the novel. The ghost of Christmas yet to come has a hand of skin and does not speak but responds to scrooge in the form of an eerie metallic noise that evokes the screech of a cemetery’s gate. Although Marley’s ghost did appear, the ghosts wailing outside scrooge’s window were incognito. Scrooge’s fiance, who eventually leaves him because of his misery ways, does not appear in the film, as were the two starving children Want and Ignorance who hid within the folds of the ghost of Christmas yet to come segment.
In this production unlike the original story, Scrooge actually fires Cratchit rather than just threatening to do so. Unlike other portrayals on film, the cratchit’s Christmas Eve dinner is bountiful. Scrooge awakens a changed man as the spirit vanishes at the cemetery; he begins making amends for his past. He sends a huge turkey to the cratchit house and donates to the men who visited him the day before and calls on Fred to accept his dinner invitation. He raises bob cratchits salary and to Tim, he becomes like his second father. His remembrance later on is as one who knew to celebrate Christmas.