It’s a little late to still be talking about Christmas movies at this point, nearly a week into the New Year. However, I was just catching up on the latest DVD news over at The Digital Bits, and I ran across some interesting information. (Well, I think it’s interesting, but then I’m kinda weird, so your mileage may vary.)

If you’ll recall, I mentioned a few entries back that one of my favorite holiday movies is the 1951 film A Christmas Carol, one of the many different versions of that story that have been made over the years. The Bits’ expert on classic films, Barrie Maxwell, has performed a survey of the major versions of this story and reviewed the available DVDs of them. He includes the following background information, which spells out in more detail what I glossed over in my own recent post:

There have been four live-action sound versions filmed under the title Scrooge, in 1935, 1951, 1970, and in 1978, the latter one made for television. The 1951 film is the famous British Alastair Sim version, released in the United States under the title A Christmas Carol. That title has also been used for 15 other versions, the majority of which were made for television. They appeared in 1938, 1943 (one of the first experimental television broadcasts), 1947 (TV), 1949 (TV), 1950 (TV), 1953 (TV), 1971, 1977 (TV), 1981 (TV), 1982 (TV), 1984 (TV), 1994 (TV), 1999 (TV), 2000 (TV), and in 2004 (TV). Some of these are updated versions of the story (e.g., the 2000 one) and of course there are other updated versions under different titles (most notably Henry Winkler’s An American Christmas Carol [1979] and Bill Murray’s Scrooged [1988]). There are also numerous renditions of the story built around animated or celebrity figures, such as Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962), Rich Little’s Christmas Carol (1978), Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983), The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), and the like.

Like me, Maxwell favors the ’51 version (he says “More so than any other version, [Sim’s] Scrooge runs the gamut of traits believably from youthful eagerness to deviousness, crass superiority, unfeeling indifference, plain meanness, pathetic remorse, and finally giddy exuberance. It’s a tour-de-force performance that never fails to please no matter how many times you see it.”), but he also gives good marks to the George C. Scott version from 1984. For whatever that’s worth…