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The 1951 film “A Christmas Carol” with Alistair Sim as Scrooge is my favorite Christmas movie. I simply can’t imagine watching it in color..

Mine too! And I hate “colorized” movies. When they did this to the 1951 film, I found and bought a copy on VHS in black and white and then some years later, a copy on DVD also in black and white. I also have a copy of It’s a Wonderful Life, also in its original black and white. I love that movie too.

I’ve always made a tradition of watching this version of a Christmas Carol late on Christmas Eve right before I go to bed an no different this year.

The thing I’ve always loved about the 1951 Christmas Carol version is they way it, I think stayed truer, not necessarily strictly to the original story line in every detail, but to the spirit of Dickens’ work – “A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas”, the brooding almost scary musical score interspersed with traditional Christmas carols and the bleak manner in which so many people lived during this time, the abject poverty that was depicted, the ghostly apparitions, the black and white photography so greatly added to the mood, even though in 1951 color was available. Black and white can be a great medium for film if done correctly

But most of all what I really like about this version, unlike some others that portray Scrooge as just a grouchy, cheapskate and almost comical and pitiful character, this version showed a man who not only had contempt for his fellow man but who also despised himself – a soulless and sinister man with a heart so hardened that he could not even find any joy for himself from his own money. This is particularly evident in the scene early in the move when Scrooge is having dinner on Christmas Eve and asks for some more bread. When the waiter tells him that the bread will cost extra, Scrooge abruptly tells him “no more bread”. He can’t even part with any of his precious money for himself for a simple thing like a bit more bread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l1_82x2BO4&feature=related

I think that Sim’s portrayal was brilliant. In the first part of the movie Scrooge is a man so “evil”, contemptible, wretched, with a physical grey pallor and bleak and sneering demeanor, it is hard to find any redeeming qualities in him worth redemption or worth routing for – which of course makes his redemption in the end all the more meaningful and joyous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8gOU8XJc7Y&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7NfDuDh0Uc&feature=related

The George C. Scott and Patrick Stewart versions were good but for me, this version is still the version that all others have still yet to match.

Exactly the reason I love Sims's Scrooge. He clearly thought long and hard about the character -- he's a prisoner of his own miserly hardness and a victim of his early life (his father who hates him because his birth killed his mother, the death of his beloved sister - aspects that are there in Dickens's book but absent from most movie versions). And he is terrified by the spirits but accurately states the trap he's in: "I am too old to change!" he exclaims to the Third Spirit.

When the conversion does come, it's also believable (that's where in my opinion the George C. Scott version doesn't ring true) -- I love the encounter between Scrooge and Mrs. Dilber the housekeeper on the stairs of his wretched tenement, and his dialogue with himself in his shaving mirror . . . Sim had perfect pitch.

One thing I forgot to mention is that the 1951 version is VERY true to the original story -- in fact it uses great scads of the original text. You can almost follow along if you have a copy of the book. Some vignettes are inserted into the story line, but in a lot of cases they illustrate the descriptive asides that Dickens was so fond of.

The music is good as you note (even though the audio is HORRIBLE!) and the cinematography is great -- the claustrophobia of Scrooge's horrible old house, the crazy camera angles as Marley's Ghost draws nearer and nearer, the black shadows in the corners and the stark underlighting of Scrooge's face -- pure genius.