A Christmas Carol (1910)

Director: J. Searle Dawley

Cast: Marc McDermott, Charles Ogle, William Bechtel

Synopsis: Based on the story by Charles Dickens: Ebenezer Scrooge is well known for his harsh, miserly ways, until he is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, and then by three other spirits.

J Searle Dawley, the man who brought the world the cinema’s first adaptation of Frankenstein also made this, the third version of Charles Dickens’ timeless Christmas classic, in the same year. He also cast Charles Ogle, the man who played the monster in Frankenstein as Bob Cratchit here. Scrooge is played by Marc McDermott (Flesh and the Devil), who was only 29 at the time. Considering Dawley had only ten-and-a-half minutes in which to cram Dickens’ story, he does a pretty good job although it inevitably feels like a whistle-stop tour of the key plot points. The effects are pretty good for the time in which the movie was made, particularly a number of triple exposure shots in which a ghostly spirit allows Scrooge to see the past, future and present without once having to leave his bedroom.
(Reviewed 19th December 2014)