The Muppet Christmas Carol - Part 5 - The Deleted Scene

Aficionados of "The Muppet Christmas Carol" (1992) know that there was a scene deleted shortly before its theatrical release.

The scene is noteworthy because it contains a song by Meredith Braun as Belle ("When Love is Gone") in which she explains the reasons for breaking up with Ebenezer. The older Scrooge even sings with Belle for a bit.

The scene is very powerful and adds a lot of emotional heft to the film (or so I think), but apparently the "suits" thought it slowed down the action too much for what was viewed as essentially a kids' movie.

Things get cut from movies all the time and the world keeps turning, but what happened here is a bit different. When the movie was originally released on home video, the song was added back in! I got the VHS version way back then and just assumed it had always been there.

Flash-forward to the new wave of home video, and most DVD versions did not include that song and neither did the subsequent  Blu-ray releases.

Since people had been watching the movie on VHS (and laser disc) for so long, it seemed as if the movie had been newly edited to remove the song, but it was actually going back to the original theatrical cut.

So, now you get debates over which is the "real" version of the movie and so on.

Personally, I don't like films being altered later, with the exception of restoring it to what the original creators wanted at the time. As something of a purist, I can understand the original theatrical cut needing to exist, but I would like it if currently available releases of the movie had the extended version, as I think it's a great song and scene.

The scene explains why Scrooge is still so upset over that breakup, which is important to his conversion. Also, it balances neatly with the "When Love is Found" reprise at the end of the movie.

It also explains why "When Love is Gone" is included in a studio version by Martina McBride during the end credits.

You can watch the scene here and judge for yourself if the suits got it right:

 

Here's some fascinating footage of the recording of the song. Michael Caine seems to have really liked it. More's the pity that it was cut. 

 

Oh, well...