What movie did YOU just FINISH watching?
Dec 7, 2020 3:50:33 GMT
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Post by Salzmank on Dec 7, 2020 3:50:33 GMT
So, I (re)watched the Albert Finney Scrooge (1970) tonight. (I haven’t seen it in years—for some reason it seems to be the Christmas Carol adaptation on TV the least.)
I’ve always loved Finney’s performance here, and I still do. Pre-redemption, this Scrooge is rightly crotchety, cranky, and constipated, but unlike most versions he has a sense of biting humor—as if he’s laughing at the world. Post-redemption, Finney is one of the most convincing Scrooges; he’s joyous but not used to joy, so he has a halting quality even as he’s dancing through the streets. Also, Alec Guinness is unsurprisingly one of the best and funniest Marleys, and Kenneth More is a hoot as the Ghost of Christmas Present (“Ebenezer Scrooge,” he booms—“come here, you weird little man!”).
And yet it doesn’t work.
It’s a musical that shouldn’t be a musical. Every song-sequence in this movie is pointless, lengthy, and boring. The first five minutes or so, as Finney wishes that every idiot who goes about with a “Merry Christmas” on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart, are wonderful. Then we break abruptly for some unmemorable song that has nothing to do with Scrooge. Even worse is a song given to Scrooge’s lost love, which goes on forever and adds nothing (we know that she loved him! We know he misses her! That’s what the dialogue is telling us!). So much for advancing the plot—every song here stops the plot dead in its tracks.
It doesn’t help, too, that every song but one is uninteresting musically and lyrically. (The exception would be “Thank You Very Much,” which goes on too long but which is at least fun—and which feels like it should’ve been in Lionel Bart’s far superior Oliver! score.) Even if the songs were good, however, and even if they did advance the plot, they still wouldn’t work. The problem is that Dickens’ plotting here is so compact that this story has no space for songs.
The composer-lyricist was Leslie Bricusse, who also executive-produced and wrote the script. Bricusse is a bête noire of many musical-theater buffs for his atrocious lyrics for Jekyll and Hyde (example: “Murder, murder— / Once there’s one done, / Murder, murder, / Can’t be undone! / Murder, murder / Lives in London!”). And, as I mentioned, his songs here are pretty bad.
But his script, weirdly enough, is pretty great. All the things his songs are missing—inventiveness, wit, charm, humor, liveliness, a point—come up in his plotting and dialogue. He knows that we know the Scrooge story, so he throws in little surprises to keep us on our toes: new lines and jokes, moving around of scenes (Scrooge deals with the charity-seeking men outside this time), a female Ghost of Christmas Past, and a surprising new scene in hell! (That scene brings back Alec Guinness’ Marley—a first-class example of using what you have to its fullest.)
This would be one of the finest Christmas Carols of them all—but the songs really do ruin it. Alas.
I’ve always loved Finney’s performance here, and I still do. Pre-redemption, this Scrooge is rightly crotchety, cranky, and constipated, but unlike most versions he has a sense of biting humor—as if he’s laughing at the world. Post-redemption, Finney is one of the most convincing Scrooges; he’s joyous but not used to joy, so he has a halting quality even as he’s dancing through the streets. Also, Alec Guinness is unsurprisingly one of the best and funniest Marleys, and Kenneth More is a hoot as the Ghost of Christmas Present (“Ebenezer Scrooge,” he booms—“come here, you weird little man!”).
And yet it doesn’t work.
It’s a musical that shouldn’t be a musical. Every song-sequence in this movie is pointless, lengthy, and boring. The first five minutes or so, as Finney wishes that every idiot who goes about with a “Merry Christmas” on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart, are wonderful. Then we break abruptly for some unmemorable song that has nothing to do with Scrooge. Even worse is a song given to Scrooge’s lost love, which goes on forever and adds nothing (we know that she loved him! We know he misses her! That’s what the dialogue is telling us!). So much for advancing the plot—every song here stops the plot dead in its tracks.
It doesn’t help, too, that every song but one is uninteresting musically and lyrically. (The exception would be “Thank You Very Much,” which goes on too long but which is at least fun—and which feels like it should’ve been in Lionel Bart’s far superior Oliver! score.) Even if the songs were good, however, and even if they did advance the plot, they still wouldn’t work. The problem is that Dickens’ plotting here is so compact that this story has no space for songs.
The composer-lyricist was Leslie Bricusse, who also executive-produced and wrote the script. Bricusse is a bête noire of many musical-theater buffs for his atrocious lyrics for Jekyll and Hyde (example: “Murder, murder— / Once there’s one done, / Murder, murder, / Can’t be undone! / Murder, murder / Lives in London!”). And, as I mentioned, his songs here are pretty bad.
But his script, weirdly enough, is pretty great. All the things his songs are missing—inventiveness, wit, charm, humor, liveliness, a point—come up in his plotting and dialogue. He knows that we know the Scrooge story, so he throws in little surprises to keep us on our toes: new lines and jokes, moving around of scenes (Scrooge deals with the charity-seeking men outside this time), a female Ghost of Christmas Past, and a surprising new scene in hell! (That scene brings back Alec Guinness’ Marley—a first-class example of using what you have to its fullest.)
This would be one of the finest Christmas Carols of them all—but the songs really do ruin it. Alas.