A CHRISTMAS CAROL (Again)

“I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me.  May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant,”

Charles Dickens

December 1843.

The Bellport, NY elementary classroom filled with 5th-grade students sat enraptured, following every word the teacher, Mr. Sullivan read from the book. They were getting their first taste of what literature is and learning about a great author. It was a new world for most of us and something more inter4sting than TV, as we casted our own characters to the visions in our heads and the words that were caught by our ears.

 

Chuck Dickens

Every day Mr. Sullivan would read another chapter as the calendar brought us closer to Christmas. The novella by English author Charles Dickens, first published on 19 December 1843 was making huge gains in my imagination, and slowly recreating the spirit of Christmas into a new meaning and spirit.

I was suddenly in charge of the sets, the costuming, and the casting of this wonderful story, so mature and yet so child-like, my imagination working overtime and leaving me wanting for more!

Then I had the good fortune of finding a movie on the TV one Christmas Eve during that season. It was a great find for me, as I sat eagerly in front of the TV and never moved. The black and white presentation would come back to me in later years as I studied cinema as art, and painting as a form of expression. It was: ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens.

Scrooge (1935) Was the first sound adaptation of the novella, and also one of the best, Starred Seymour Hicks as Scrooge. A dark, brooding aesthetic adaptation that owes as much to German Expressionism as anything This version made great use of the photographic technology of the time and also managed to fit the whole story into just over an hour without much strain, yet is the only one that I look for, all other adaptations may be just as good, but this is like that first girlfriend or first kiss!

 

This is not on your I-phone

Over the years I have seen it in most of its forms in movies and some stage plays, and so I went one Sunday evening with Toots II (Lois), Princess Pat of Foxwood Points (Patrizia) and her husband Bill along with TLW (The Little Woman).

 

'SCROOGE' ?

In a small theatre in Port Jefferson, called Theatre 3, a stage production was presented, and although it did not run the story faithfully, it tried very hard to recreate within the limits of talents and money something that was entertaining.

Nothing will ever recreate or equal for me that first production, the one that went on in my 10-year-old mind, or that great movie I found that season, and I always try to find it again, but like they say: “You can’t go home again.”