A Christmas Carol (1938) (NR, 1938)

After rejecting his nephew's invitation to Christmas dinner and firing his clerk on Christmas Eve, the incorrigible Scrooge is visited that night by the ghost of his ex-partner, Jacob Marley, who urges him to change his ways. Three more spirits follow, who show him how his past, present and future actions affect not just him, but everyone he had once been close to. Their work complete, Scrooge awakens on Christmas day a changed man. Full of life, he rushes to make amends and to accept an estranged nephew's dinner invitation.

Those well versed in the more faithful adaptations of the Dickens tale will notice that this charming early adaptation does things its own way. It veers away from Scrooge for uncommon stretches, lingering on the Cratchit family, on Scrooge's nephew and his wife-to-be. The living are the stars here, the ghosts rather restrained and unmemorable, which makes it a good one for kids who might otherwise be intimidated by the subject matter.

Other peculiarities include Tiny Tim, who isn't at all tiny, and whose full lips and saintly features make him look more like Joan of Arc than an ailing child. Scrooge, embodied by spindly Reginald Owen, is almost spider-like, with an unsettling hair arrangement that wouldn't look out of place in Oz or Whoville. In contrast to Alastair Sim, who would fill the same shoes 15 years later, this Scrooge's miserliness comes as a result of his cruel nature, not the other way around. He's so twisted up inside that he actually seems to enjoy the taste of cough syrup.