Balladeer’s Blog’s Fifteenth Annual Christmas Carol-a-Thon resumes with a new review. One of the few surviving silent film versions that I had not yet covered.
SCROOGE, OR MARLEY’S GHOST (1901) – This big-screen Christmas Carol adaptation was the first-ever cinematic depiction of the Charles Dickens classic. The criminally neglected British silent film pioneer R.W. Paul produced the movie and fellow trailblazer Walter R. Booth directed.
Those two Englishmen deserve to be as synonymous with the early silent film era as Melies, Lumiere and the Pathe Brothers. There’s a terrific documentary from British film historian Kevin Brownlow that covers – among others – Paul and Booth and their works. Kenneth Branagh narrated.
Back to this 1901 production. Scrooge was originally just over 6 minutes long but like so many movies from the silent era it suffered damage in the decades ahead. About 5 minutes have survived and the film bears a few similarities to the 13-minute Edison Films Christmas Carol from 1910.
Like the later Edison effort, R.W. Paul’s production is presented mostly in pantomime style and with painted backdrops but it blazed a trail with a few special effects and was the first silent movie to use intertitles during its run-time.
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