Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Paul Kydd UK 1951 English (B&W); Drama (Renown); 86 minutes (U certificate)Crew includes: Brian Desmond-Hurst (Director/Producer); Noel Langley (Screenwriter, adapting Novella A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens)Cast includes: Alastair Sim, Kathleen Harrison, Mervyn Johns, Hermione Baddeley, Michael Hordern, George ColeAn old miser (Sim) is visited one Christmas Eve by the ghost of his long-dead business partner (Hordern), followed by the spirits of Christmases Past, Present and Yet to Come, who guide the bitter man towards a kinder self, having recognised the meanness in his life.To many, the definitive version of the oft-filmed classic.

gavin6942 An old bitter miser (Alistair Sim) is given a chance for redemption when he is haunted by three ghosts on Christmas Eve.This is generally considered the best adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" ever made. That is a bold statement, given how many have been made (dozens, maybe hundreds). But, indeed, if it is not, it certainly ranks among the more prominent. (For my money, "Muppet Christmas Carol" is the best, though it may be a bit different.) Regardless, this one, having been made in 1951, has no doubt influenced future versions for more than sixty years.Worth checking out if you like the story and have not seen this version. It does not stray far from the novella, and therefore is not much different from most other versions, but still has a strong cast.

SimonJack Alastair Sims carries this 1951 version of "A Christmas Carol" without a doubt. The inimitable Sims, with the perfect physical appearance of larger than life eyes, makes the most convincing, ebullient, overly ecstatic Scrooge of any. That is, after he "sees the light" through his visits from the three spirits of Christmas. As the miserly, hard and cold Ebenezer Scrooge in the beginning, he is good, but not better than those in other films. But, Sim's interpretation of the character has a nuance that I think is very good. He soon is quick to plead with the spirits to escape what he is seeing and to change. So, when he changes, we see the greater joy he imbues. This 1951 version of the Dickens classic is one of the very best. It is a favorite of mine, along with the 1938 film with Reginald Owen in the lead role. This version is 86 minutes long and gives more details of the times with each ghost. I don't think the main supporting cast can match that of the 1938 film. It would have been something to see that cast of Bob Cratchit, Fred, Tiny Tim and Marley's ghost do this film with Sim. The whole film would take on more life. But as it is, the supporting cast here are all OK. This film also gives considerable attention to Scrooge's past love, and it gives him a glimpse of that lost love in the future. We see the Scrooge as a young man with his fiancé, Alice (played by Rona Anderson). After his logical talk about trying to better himself in the world, Alice says, "Another idol has replaced me in your heart. A golden idol." Then Scrooge sees her later caring for sick people. Other scenes show the joyful time he had at Fezziwig's party and with friends. These past events especially are fleshed out much more in this film, and that adds weight to the loss that Scrooge has suffered by his choices in life. All the more fuel to fire his heart when he has a conversion. I have five films of the Dickens story. My two favorite are the 1938 and this 1951. I also like the 1970 musical with Albert Finney. And the new films with George C. Scott and Patrick Stewart are fine. But these two old films have the feel and the scenery that looks for real for mid-19th century England as well. For people who can't stand black and white, the newer versions in color are still very goods renditions of the story. Not excellent, but very good. One other excellent film in color is the 1970 musical rendition. It stars Albert Finney and other top British actors.

joe-pearce-1 This film has been a part of my life since the first time I saw it about 60 years back. No Christmas season has gone by without my watching it again, sometimes more than once, and with the coming of VHS and DVD, I now view it even more often. Why? Well, I am and have always been a fairly voracious reader, and a highly voracious film viewer, and while I certainly cannot claim to have read even one-twentieth of the novels upon which subsequent films were based, of those I have read there are precious few in which the film version has equaled, or perhaps even slightly surpassed, the original. I could probably count them on the fingers of one hand. This is one of them. (Another is the much underrated - but mainly by critics who have never read the novel - DEATH ON THE NILE, the most perfect realization of an Agatha Christie novel ever filmed, and, because so well-made, perhaps a bit more exciting.) But back to A Christmas CAROL. Dickens is arguably the greatest novelist in the English language, and the characters he creates, the dialog he provides for them, and his general commentary on the most dire or comic situations are indelible and unforgettable to anyone who has indulged in reading him. Possibly because of that, most of his greatest novels have had at least one great film version, and most often a good deal of their greatness has been determined by how closely they stick to the original text. Think of the 1930s version of THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP (with an unforgettable performance by Hay Petrie as Quilp), the 1940s versions of OLIVER TWIST, GREAT EXPECTATIONS and NICHOLAS NICKELBY, and the 1950s version of THE PICKWICK PAPERS. Of course, these all came from England. The one Hollywood excursion into true film greatness by way of Charles Dickens is the incredibly moving 1935 version of A TALE OF TWO CITIES (although they produced a first rate David COPPERFIELD shortly before it). But for me none of these comes as close to a full realization of Dickens as the 1951 Christmas CAROL. Every time I see it I feel like I have truly been transported back to mid-19th century England. The visual filming is absolutely perfect, of course, but it is the performances of the entire cast that make the film the greatest film realization of any of Dickens' works, but most especially that of Alastair Sim as Scrooge. This has to be one of the very greatest acting performances in the entire history of cinema. I have seen any number of other actors in this role - Seymour Hicks, Fredric March (on TV), Albert Finney, George C. Scott, Patrick Stewart - and great actors that they all are, not one comes even close to Sim. As is commented on elsewhere here, he quite literally 'owns' the role, and his is my mind's eye image whenever I think of old Ebenezer Scrooge. (Interestingly, that great British character actor Francis L. Sullivan is my similar mind's eye image of Nero Wolfe whenever I read one of Rex Stout's hilarious mysteries, yet I'm pretty certain Sullivan never played that particular role.) Sim was a great and highly prized comedian, yet his greatest film performance is certainly in this very dramatic and thrilling version of the Dickens classic. And Michael Hordern is just as definitive as the ghost of Jacob Marley - has ever this condemned spirit been so hapless, shrill and self-condemnatory as Hordern makes him, or so concerned with saving his friend Scrooge from the torment now visited upon himself? You can only pray that his condemnation is not for all eternity, but, like Hamlet's ghost, only a temporary state until his sins have been expiated. And, amazingly enough, George Cole, playing Scrooge as a better-hearted young man, looks amazingly like a young Alastair Sim, or at least a young Scrooge who will grow into the old Scrooge we now see before us. For me, this is not just a perfect film realization of a great short novel, but quite simply one of the most perfect movies ever made (another one would be the 1940 THIEF OF BAGDAD, but it was not based on anything so concretely unchangeable as a Dickens novel), one so grandly flawless that the imagination cannot conceive of it ever being done as well again.