Film

Scrooge

Name: Scrooge
Genre: Fantasy, Drama
Released: 1951
Cast: Alastair Sim, Mervyn Johns, Glyn Dearman, George Cole, Brian Worth

This is the Scrooge most people mean when they say 'the good one' — the 1951 British film with Alastair Sim giving the definitive performance, all wounded pride curdled into cruelty and then cracked open by terror and joy. It's atmospheric, genuinely eerie in places, and finds real ache in Scrooge's childhood before the redemption arrives. Essential viewing for anyone who thinks they know this story.

TMDb rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy a classic ghost story played completely straight, where the moral weight and Alastair Sim's sour, twitchy lead carry every scene without a wink.

Skip it if you bristle at earnest sermonising and stagey studio sets, or need a brisk modern pace; its 1951 studio look and moral earnestness can feel dated.

What it asks of you: Eighty-six minutes at an unhurried pace, with long stretches of talk and sombre reflection before its warmer, lighter moments arrive.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Muppet Christmas Carol1992

Michael Caine plays Scrooge dead straight while Kermit and friends do the jokes, and the balance somehow works beautifully — funnier than Sim's version, but every bit as moving when it needs to be.

But Puppets narrating Dickens might be a bridge too far if you want your ghosts unsmiling.

It's a Wonderful Life1946

Another man shown by a supernatural visitor what his life actually means, another Christmas Eve reckoning — Capra's film is warmer and sadder than its reputation suggests, and just as essential.

But Its sentimentality is more upfront and unguarded than Sim's film ever allows itself to be.

Miracle on 34th Street1947

A gentler, sunnier Christmas classic from the same golden age, with a courtroom instead of ghosts but the same conviction that belief and kindness are worth fighting for.

But Almost nothing dark happens in it — if you want ghosts and guilt, this won't scratch that itch.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Scrooge

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Ikiru1952

Both are studies of a man confronted with how little his life has meant, given one last chance to become someone worth knowing before it's too late.

Kurosawa's masterpiece about a joyless bureaucrat who learns he's dying and spends his remaining months trying to do one good thing — no ghosts, but the same engine: mortality forcing a wasted life into sudden, painful clarity.

But Slow, subtitled, and devastating rather than uplifting — this earns its transformation the hard way.

A Christmas Carol1984

George C. Scott's Scrooge is meaner and more physically frightening than Sim's, a genuinely different reading of the same man, made for television but shot with real weight and care.

But It plays it straighter and more literal than the 1951 film — less strangeness, more fidelity.

The Bishop's Wife1947

Cary Grant as an angel sorting out a marriage rather than a miser, but the same postwar appetite for gentle supernatural intervention and quiet moral correction runs through it.

But It's a romance at heart, not a ghost story — the fantasy element is softer and less eerie.

Holiday Inn1942

Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, and the original recording of White Christmas, if you want to follow the Sim film with something that has zero interest in redemption and total interest in charm.

But There's a blackface number that hasn't aged well and will catch you off guard if you don't know it's coming.

A Christmas Story1983

American, wry, nostalgic rather than gothic — a completely different register of Christmas film, but one that shares Dickens's eye for the specific cruelties and absurdities of childhood.

But No ghosts, no reckoning, no tears — it's comic memoir, not moral fable.

Meet Me in St. Louis1944

Judy Garland and a family facing an uncertain Christmas in old St. Louis — glorious Technicolor from the same era, trading Scrooge's isolation for a study of a family almost torn apart.

But It's a musical, and a slow-building one — patience required if you want the payoff.

Great Expectations1946

David Lean's Dickens adaptation, shot in the same shadowy black-and-white British style, with the same interest in how childhood deprivation calcifies into adult character.

But No fantasy, no Christmas — just Dickens's eye for cruelty and coincidence played entirely straight.

Scrooged1988

It's the same ghost-visitation structure and the same corporate-cruelty-to-redemption arc, just filtered through garish satire instead of Victorian gloom.

Bill Murray as a monstrous TV executive haunted by the same three spirits, played almost entirely for gleeful 80s excess and cynicism — the identical bones as Dickens, wearing a shoulder-padded suit and sneering the whole way.

But Loud, mean-spirited, and dated in its jokes — a very different animal from Sim's quiet menace and warmth.