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I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Overrated and overhyped

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Looking at this version of A Christmas Carol back to back with the Reginald Owen one done in Hollywood by MGM and probably the most frequently run on television J. Arthur Rank sacrificed traditional sentimentality for class warfare. Odd considering that Mr. Rank in life was a most conservative gentleman.It was the dog eat dog world of capitalism that turned Ebenzer Scrooge into the miserly individual he was. At least that's what it seemed to be to this viewer. Look at how Scrooge turns on his initial benefactor Mr. Fezziwick, look also how the firm of Scrooge&Marley was born, to save Mr. Jorik from prison and ruin. Their actions made Alastair Sim and Michael Hordern as Scrooge and Marley both wealthy men, but at a price. When Hordern's ghost comes calling Sim you see exactly how those chains were formed that he now carries.Rank put together an impressive list of players to support Sim as the man who learns the welfare of mankind not only is his business, but the government's as well. Better to vote for elected officials intent on keeping Christmas's spirit. No accident that this film was done during the reforming Labour government of Clement Attlee. That government essentially remade British society to what it is today. The welfare of British mankind was most assuredly its business.An interesting and alternative look at A Christmas Carol.

The 1951 colorized version of "Scrooge" (aka "A Christmas Carol") is my favorite version. I'm watching it now and something occurred to me. I've always wondered why some conservative filmmaker hasn't released a conservative version of the film.Imagine Scrooge as a businessman on the brink of financial ruin due to his charitable nature ... partly due to his association with his former partner, Jacob Marley, who was also a charitable person. But one night, Scrooge is visited by Marley's ghost - who tells Scrooge he wants to help him save his business. Marley tells Scrooge he'll be visited by 3 conservative spirits during the night - then vanishes. But later, the spirits come.The ghost of Christmas past shows Scrooge how his charitable giving has kept him poor over the years. The ghost of Christmas present shows Scrooge how much he overpays his clerk, Bob Crachitt - even though he knows Crachitt is also embezzling company funds to give his family a better life. Then, the ghost of Christmas yet to come shows Scrooge beset by all manner of hangers-on and welfare chiselers who know and take advantage of his charitable nature ... until finally, Scrooge is forced into bankruptcy and dies broke.But Christmas morning, Scrooge wakes up conservative. He fires Bob Crachitt, turning him over to the police for embezzling. Then, he cuts off all charitable giving and adopts a cutthroat attitude toward competitors and even his own clients - becoming wealthy beyond his wildest dreams.

Alastair Sims carries this 1951 version of "A Christmas Carol" without a doubt. The inimitable Sims, with the perfect physical appearance of larger than life eyes, makes the most convincing, ebullient, overly ecstatic Scrooge of any. That is, after he "sees the light" through his visits from the three spirits of Christmas. As the miserly, hard and cold Ebenezer Scrooge in the beginning, he is good, but not better than those in other films. But, Sim's interpretation of the character has a nuance that I think is very good. He soon is quick to plead with the spirits to escape what he is seeing and to change. So, when he changes, we see the greater joy he imbues. This 1951 version of the Dickens classic is one of the very best. It is a favorite of mine, along with the 1938 film with Reginald Owen in the lead role. This version is 86 minutes long and gives more details of the times with each ghost. I don't think the main supporting cast can match that of the 1938 film. It would have been something to see that cast of Bob Cratchit, Fred, Tiny Tim and Marley's ghost do this film with Sim. The whole film would take on more life. But as it is, the supporting cast here are all OK. This film also gives considerable attention to Scrooge's past love, and it gives him a glimpse of that lost love in the future. We see the Scrooge as a young man with his fiancé, Alice (played by Rona Anderson). After his logical talk about trying to better himself in the world, Alice says, "Another idol has replaced me in your heart. A golden idol." Then Scrooge sees her later caring for sick people. Other scenes show the joyful time he had at Fezziwig's party and with friends. These past events especially are fleshed out much more in this film, and that adds weight to the loss that Scrooge has suffered by his choices in life. All the more fuel to fire his heart when he has a conversion. I have five films of the Dickens story. My two favorite are the 1938 and this 1951. I also like the 1970 musical with Albert Finney. And the new films with George C. Scott and Patrick Stewart are fine. But these two old films have the feel and the scenery that looks for real for mid-19th century England as well. For people who can't stand black and white, the newer versions in color are still very goods renditions of the story. Not excellent, but very good. One other excellent film in color is the 1970 musical rendition. It stars Albert Finney and other top British actors.

This film has been a part of my life since the first time I saw it about 60 years back. No Christmas season has gone by without my watching it again, sometimes more than once, and with the coming of VHS and DVD, I now view it even more often. Why? Well, I am and have always been a fairly voracious reader, and a highly voracious film viewer, and while I certainly cannot claim to have read even one-twentieth of the novels upon which subsequent films were based, of those I have read there are precious few in which the film version has equaled, or perhaps even slightly surpassed, the original. I could probably count them on the fingers of one hand. This is one of them. (Another is the much underrated - but mainly by critics who have never read the novel - DEATH ON THE NILE, the most perfect realization of an Agatha Christie novel ever filmed, and, because so well-made, perhaps a bit more exciting.) But back to A Christmas CAROL. Dickens is arguably the greatest novelist in the English language, and the characters he creates, the dialog he provides for them, and his general commentary on the most dire or comic situations are indelible and unforgettable to anyone who has indulged in reading him. Possibly because of that, most of his greatest novels have had at least one great film version, and most often a good deal of their greatness has been determined by how closely they stick to the original text. Think of the 1930s version of THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP (with an unforgettable performance by Hay Petrie as Quilp), the 1940s versions of OLIVER TWIST, GREAT EXPECTATIONS and NICHOLAS NICKELBY, and the 1950s version of THE PICKWICK PAPERS. Of course, these all came from England. The one Hollywood excursion into true film greatness by way of Charles Dickens is the incredibly moving 1935 version of A TALE OF TWO CITIES (although they produced a first rate David COPPERFIELD shortly before it). But for me none of these comes as close to a full realization of Dickens as the 1951 Christmas CAROL. Every time I see it I feel like I have truly been transported back to mid-19th century England. The visual filming is absolutely perfect, of course, but it is the performances of the entire cast that make the film the greatest film realization of any of Dickens' works, but most especially that of Alastair Sim as Scrooge. This has to be one of the very greatest acting performances in the entire history of cinema. I have seen any number of other actors in this role - Seymour Hicks, Fredric March (on TV), Albert Finney, George C. Scott, Patrick Stewart - and great actors that they all are, not one comes even close to Sim. As is commented on elsewhere here, he quite literally 'owns' the role, and his is my mind's eye image whenever I think of old Ebenezer Scrooge. (Interestingly, that great British character actor Francis L. Sullivan is my similar mind's eye image of Nero Wolfe whenever I read one of Rex Stout's hilarious mysteries, yet I'm pretty certain Sullivan never played that particular role.) Sim was a great and highly prized comedian, yet his greatest film performance is certainly in this very dramatic and thrilling version of the Dickens classic. And Michael Hordern is just as definitive as the ghost of Jacob Marley - has ever this condemned spirit been so hapless, shrill and self-condemnatory as Hordern makes him, or so concerned with saving his friend Scrooge from the torment now visited upon himself? You can only pray that his condemnation is not for all eternity, but, like Hamlet's ghost, only a temporary state until his sins have been expiated. And, amazingly enough, George Cole, playing Scrooge as a better-hearted young man, looks amazingly like a young Alastair Sim, or at least a young Scrooge who will grow into the old Scrooge we now see before us. For me, this is not just a perfect film realization of a great short novel, but quite simply one of the most perfect movies ever made (another one would be the 1940 THIEF OF BAGDAD, but it was not based on anything so concretely unchangeable as a Dickens novel), one so grandly flawless that the imagination cannot conceive of it ever being done as well again.