A few takeaways from the silent British film "Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost" from 1901...
The special effects are quite good. Nothing like we have today with CGI and all, but still not bad and for 1901, astonishing!
It seems that a lot of early filmmakers were big on "trick" films with special effects, as they wanted to use this new medium to show something that couldn't be done in real life.
But here we do get a story as well, but you definitely have to be familiar with the source material or you'd have no idea what was happening on screen.
The surviving footage starts with Bob Cratchit showing someone out of the office. It could be Fred or one or more of the charity collectors. I'm guessing Fred, as he shows up in the Christmas Present sequence.
My first thought is that Scrooge and Cratchit look fairly similar. You kind of have to figure out who's who. I don't know how Scrooge was generally portrayed on stage at the time, but illustrations of the character usually give him a recognizable Scrooge look.
Since this is a silent film, there's no spoken dialogue, but there are some inter-titles, but they don't have any dialogue in them.
But because we're so familiar with the story, we know that Scrooge is giving Bob a hard time about wanting the day off.
Scrooge does put on a pretty good-looking Scroogey hat when he leaves. At his door, we see Marley's face in the door knocker, which must've been pretty impressive to 1901 audiences and is still pretty good.
Scrooge is very jumpy as a result and seems to be looking over his shoulder a lot as he gets ready to retire.
Marley's Ghost comes in and it's interesting that he's wearing a white sheet. I wonder when that became shorthand for a ghost. His entrance is another good special effect.
Marley's Ghost does the work of all the spirits, so he projects scenes from Christmas Past onto his curtains.
It's hard to tell exactly what the two scenes are. The second one certainly seems to be Belle breaking up with Ebenezer, but I'm not sure what the first one is. Is it Fan meeting Ebenezer at school or Belle going to his office.
Old Scrooge emotes mightily at both images, so you can't tell if the first one is happy or sad.
An inter-title tells us that we're going to see Bob and Fred toast Scrooge in the present.
So, we go to the Cratchits' house. They have a big sign reading "God bless us, everyone," which is presumably for our benefit, as Tiny Tim turns to the camera and mouths that line.
A fun thing is that I think Martha is hiding and comes out from under the table to surprise Bob.
We next get a brief stop at Fred's house and they have a big sign reading "A Merry Xmas." That makes you wonder how long that particular abbreviation has been around.
For these scenes, a transparent Scrooge and Marley's Ghost fade in and out, and that's another good special effect.
The next inter-title is for the "Christmas That Might Be," which is a hint that things can be changed, as that's a different implication from "Christmas Yet to Come."
It says that we'll see Scrooge's grave and the death of Tiny Tim, but the footage ends after Scrooge sees his grave, which oddly seems to be in the middle of a busy street!
So, there's enough surviving footage of this film to give us the flavor of the production and we can easily fill in the gaps.
You can't judge something like this 120 years without cutting it a lot of slack, but the special effects do hold up pretty well and it's a fascinating glimpse into the past.
And you won't feel like you need those three minutes back!
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