The Empress, The Misanthrope…And ‘Arfur’ January 7, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, Film & DVD Reviews, British Film , 3 commentsNo, worry not; this is not some kind of ‘Groundhog Day’, and you aren’t trapped in an inverted ‘Narnia’, where it’s forever Christmas.
But after grumbling long and hard about the failure of anyone, in any region, to market a definitive DVD version of Scrooge, the 1951 version of Charles Dickens fable, A Christmas Carol, and lambasting DD Home Entertainment for marketing what was reported to be an obviously flawed Scrooge: 2-disc Collectors Edition, I had to find out the truth myself. Even though the turkey has long gone, and Easter eggs are very probably starting to clog the aisles of supermarkets up and down the land.
However, I have good news I must impart; DDHE’s 2-disc CE of Scrooge contains the best version I have ever seen on home video, with a more than decent transfer, an excellent selection of extras, including, at last, the inclusion of that previously missing commentary by ‘young Scrooge’ himself, George Cole. Ah, bliss.
At the risk of coming across all Mark Kermode like (the quiffed one can find a link between The Exorcist and, well, anything…), those extras also held a surprise for this John Ford fan. Finding something new about your favourite director, long dead though he be, gives one a taste of the excitement that archaeologists must experience when they peel back the layers of history to find that blurred vision of the past, coming ever clearer.
I didn’t know, for instance, of the life-long bond between John Ford, my appetite for whom grows more insatiable, and Brian Desmond Hurst, the director of Scrooge, and the self-styled ‘Empress of Ireland’. As George Cole says to Marcus Hearn in the film’s commentary, struggling and failing to imbue the word with as little innuendo as he can manage, he was, ah, a ‘flamboyant’ character.
In fact, as Christopher Robbins describes in his book The Empress of Ireland, Hurst was indeed the most flamboyant eccentric and bon viveur imaginable. A fascinating raconteur and man of enormous charm, Hurst was a man of many contradictions. He was a Protestant Ulsterman who converted to Catholicism. A republican sympathiser who fought in the first World War and made propaganda films during the second. A devout homosexual who was equally as fervent in worship of his patron saint St Thérése.
After enduring the horrors of Gallipoli, following the ‘war to end all wars’, Belfast born Hurst travelled first to Canada to study art, then to Hollywood, where, in 1925 at the age of 30, he spent the next eight years as an assistant to Ford, studying how the great man worked. A spinner of yarns himself (he talked of being the son of a wealthy doctor, when actually his father was an alcoholic shipyard worker), he must have found himself at home with Ford, who delighted in introducing the Irishman to colleagues as his ‘cousin’. Typical.
Hurst’s version of Scrooge, while not quite in the same league technically as those other great Dickens adaptations Great Expectations or Oliver Twist, is nonetheless an undoubted classic and fully deserves to be mentioned in the same breath. It is raised to that status by an iconic central performance from the incomparable Alastair Sim, a superb supporting cast and a production design and attention to detail that is as faithful as it could be both to the period and to illustrations that accompanied the contemporary publication of A Christmas Carol.
And if Hurst did learn anything at the feet of the master, it may be detected possibly not only in the delightful staging of Fezziwig’s party, and the repeated musical motif of the beautiful lilting ballad ‘Barbara Allen’. He may not have been Ford, or even Lean, but Hurst is more than competent, especially when, as he himself generously pointed out, he was in possession of a first class script. From first class source material.
Kathleen Harrison, Ernest Thesiger, Jack Walker, Michael Horden, Mervyn Johns - Scrooge boasts a superb list of players. Nonetheless, it’s Sim’s bravado portrayal of Dickens’ eponymous greedy, grasping, vindictive misanthrope, who is transformed into a giddy, repentant, giggling embodiment of Christmas itself, that impresses on the memory.
Funny thing this ‘Scroogery’; I’ve read so much around the ‘net the last couple of years - one IMDB commentator says: ‘a truly excellent quality print of this 1951 film apparently does not exist due to irresponsible storage & treatment of the original negative’, others state authoritatively that there are several mint 35mm prints owned by collectors, even that American rights holders VCI last, frankly disappointing, release was ‘fully restored and re-mastered from the original 35mm negative discovered in England’ (hasn’t stopped VCI saying that they’re going to have another go and dropping hints that they’ll get it right next time.)
DDHE announced this Collectors Edition of Scrooge around Easter last year. It was only available from them direct at that time and then only went on sale at other etailers on-line in recent months. However, it has been confirmed by at least one purchaser that early pressings did not contain the George Cole commentary that was promised by the packaging. DDHE said it was a mistake…and that appeared to be that. But now the commentary is there, and it is the inclusion of Cole speaking, in 2005, so fondly of the film, and colleagues he appeared with, that makes this set so worthy of Collectors Edition status.
Okay - what of DDHE’s latest transfer? I’ve compared it with their ‘50th Anniversary Edition’, and while it’s evident that the same elements have been used for both, this Collectors Edition, with both discs inside a clear case with quite attractive artwork (the whole in a sturdy embossed slipcase), is clearly superior. DDHE has given the transfer another digital wash and brush-up, thus there are many fewer distracting nicks and marks on display leaving the CE remarkably clean.
It also looks a tad sharper and maybe a little more detailed than the AE, though not hugely so. Yes, it’s still high contrast, something that Hurst was aiming at, but maybe not this much, and in some scenes very black blacks lack any detail at all, and the whites are blown, particularly at the start, the ‘Renown Films’ logo and the opening scene not boding well. But in others, it shows terrific detail and greys right across the scale; so clear that in one scene, as Scrooge peers into a mirror, you can quite plainly see one of the technicians peeping from behind a curtain.
The mono sound is quite decent, there’s some background hiss, but nothing too distracting.
So the transfer is, happily, better than expected, what of the extras? Do they really make this a true ‘Collectors Edition’? Most certainly. Let me get the least wanted extra out of the way; the ’colourised’ version, which dates from the days of VHS. Introduced in sickly fashion by Patrick McNee (’I love Christmas…’), who plays young Marley in the film, it’s another of those genuine paint by numbers atrocities. I’ve seen proponents of this practice excuse themselves by claiming that ‘they wanted to film it in colour anyway’ (honest, guv!). Apparently, in the US, Legend Films, are preparing to crayon in Scrooge again. Groan…
If there’s any doubt, on the commentary track, George Cole makes it clear that Scrooge was always going to be in black and white, and was conceived and designed for such. Hurst himself preferred to film in black and white, loved the contrast and deep shadows it produced and ‘couldn’t really handle colour’ - you’ve been warned; watch the colour version and Hurst will come back from the grave and haunt you Jacob Marley style.
I’ll add that in any case, the colour version is less detailed, and quite heavily marked compared to it’s better black and white iteration. It is, in short, a humbug. Bah!
On disc one, the black and white film comes with the aforementioned commentary by George Cole, moderated by Marcus Hearn. I much prefer moderated commentaries, especially when the commentator needs to be sometimes teased out of a reverie as Cole does. Much is discussed, not least Cole’s relationship with Alastair and Naomi Sim, George as the perfect choice to play a young Scrooge (except in the school scene, where the 27-year-old is clearly a little too long in the tooth), the production and Cole’s career. Cole sometimes frustrates Hearn - when the moderator asks for the third time ‘What was he like?’ about some member of the cast, Cole hits straight back, for the third time, with a slightly terse ‘He was a very nice man’ instead of the gossip that may have been expected.
It’s the moderators lot, when, in a bid to fill dead air, to also ask the occasional daft question and Cole is clearly a little miffed when asked did he fear being typecast, the decades of work between ‘Flash’ Harry and ‘Arfur’ Daley apparently dismissed. Overall, it’s an interesting commentary track, Cole’s affection for the Sims more than obvious, with lots of anecdotes on both his and Alastair’s career, heaps of genial nostlgia. And in between that, Hearn has done his research and has trivia a plenty to keep the whole thing moving nicely.
Also on disc one, The Spirit of Christmas Past, a 15 minute interview with Cole, in which Marcus Hearn covers most of the points already handled in the commentary, albeit with less spontaneity. There’s a 28 minute 1950 BBC radio play of A Christmas Carol with Alec Guinness in the lead, a 14 minute silent version of the piece, with Charles Rock (that looks as if it’s about to jump off its sprockets at any moment), and a short photo gallery.
Alongside the colour version on disc two you’ll find another BBC radio version (both plays were apparently destined for the aborted BBC/Warner R1 release), this time from 1964 and with Ralph Richardson as both narrator and old Ebenezer that runs nearly an hour - Richardson is a much better Scrooge than Guinness by the way - another silent version from 1922 with a suprisingly decent transfer, a throwaway five minute Traditions of Christmas feature that looks at why we stuff ourselves with pudding, send cards (but not why we need so many bizarrely wrapped pairs of socks), and all things ‘Christmassy’, plus another short image gallery with pages from a book of A Christmas Carol that was published to promote the film.
Finally, there’s also a 16 minutes plus interview with Christopher Robbins who recalls his friend in The Legendary Brian Desmond Hurst. It’s an affectionate look back at the time Robbins, then a young hack, received a call out of the blue from an aging Hurst to help write a screenplay (though he had never done so before) on the life of Jesus Christ. It was never filmed, but the ever-colourful Hurst and Robbins had one hell of a time…
Accompanying the set is a very nicely researched 24-page full colour booklet of ‘viewing notes’, in which Marcus Hearn points out that the film was not particularly well received by some critics, who were somewhat sniffy (’too grim for kiddies, too dull for adults’). But, nevertheless, others did hail it as a shot in the arm for the ailing British film industry, and it put plenty of bums on cinema seats both sides of the Atlantic. Over the years, with repeated seasonal TV showings and theatrical revivals, Scrooge’s reputation has grown and grown. Rightly so.
Place your order now for the Scrooge 2-disc Collectors Edition; just in time for Christmas 2007…