[GeorgiaDawg32]

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..

[apocalypto]

I agree. And it is much better than later remakes.

btw, Fox has had Christmas themes, Nancy Grace used today's show to honor our military men. But, as far as I can tell, not a word from MSNBC that it is Christmas. Yesterday, they had prison shows, today they had a child molestation case, right now they show a rehash of Caylee Anthony's murder.

[Caramelgal]

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.