I have to take issue with any version that deviates from the story, or makes substantial changes. I haven't seen the Sim version in years (does anyone show it on TV anymore?), but it was my favourite for years. Perhaps it would not be so if I saw it again.
The Owen version was always my father's favorite, probably because it came out when he was a boy. I was never fond of it, because as a kid I felt the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come should be frightening (probably a result of seeing the animated version in which he appears with a flaming skull for a head), and it simply isn't in that film (it looks like a young woman with a sack over her head, and she's shorter than Owen, for crying out loud). It also invents several scenes at the beginning that show Fred and Bob Cratchit being chummy, something that was not in the book and which steals focus from Scrooge (whose story this is supposed to be) for much of the film. Owen's portrayal is also a bit too stagey, and his Scrooge seems to want to reform (he's practically transformed during the first spirit's visit).
The Scott version is the antithesis of the Owen version. I haven't a problem with Scott's portrayal, but the writing...ugh. Scott's Scrooge is sarcastic and unrepentant until the very end, and his sudden transformation makes no sense at all. Dickens' dialogue is subverted into opportunities to toss in irony and sarcasm which seems completely out of place. Fan's statement that "Father is so much kinder now" is completely subverted by the next set-up in which we actually see their father (the only version that does so, I believe), who is not kind in any sense of the word. These questionable deviations derail Dickens' careful building of Scrooge's past, which is supposed to show him as a sensitive man who reacted badly to the tragedies of his life and withdrew from the rest of humanity (and his own humanity). And the music...were the producers so afraid that we wouldn't know how to react that we had to be thumped over the head with these heavy-handed musical cues?
I was fond of the musical version with Finney, but the recent "restored" version that now circulates makes it unwatchable. The scene in hell is not only not in the book, it's so far removed from anything Dickens would even have conceived that it doesn't fit with the rest of the film. It's high camp, just like Guinness' portrayal of Marley, which also doesn't quite fit. There's a reason it was on the cutting room floor; it should have been left there. It also shares the sin of the Owen version that it has Scrooge popping up everywhere on Christmas Day (in the book, he spends the holiday with Fred and Fred's friends only).
The Richard Williams version is probably closer in tone to the Dickens original, but it's gimped by its short runtime. However, it is the only adaptation I've ever seen that truly makes Ignorance and Want seem horrific like in the book (the Scott version makes them look like unwashed Goth kids, not really horrific at all, and most versions leave them out completely), and it's the only one that attempts to depict how people around the world celebrate Christmas despite their hardships.
I also have a peeve about adaptations that insist on having Marley announce that the spirits will appear "when the clock tolls one, the second at two, the third at three" (or, "more mercurial, he shall come in his own time" in the Scott version, inexplicably) in defiance of Dickens, but then leave in the scene in which Scrooge exclaims in astonishment, "The spirits have done it all in one night." Unfortunately, this seems to plague nearly every adaptation I've ever seen. In Dickens' book, Marley explains that the spirits will come on three successive nights, which causes Scrooge some disorientation when the second spirit appears because he can't believe he slept through the entire day and into the next night. He then is truly surprised when the boy in the street tells him, "Why, it's Christmas Day," because he feels he has been gone with the spirits long enough for three days to have actually passed.
In fact, I can't stand any production that rushes through the visitations like rote recitation. These are the meat and potatoes of the piece, it is here that Scrooge is made to regret his losses and the losses of others, to feel again the pain he has shut away for so long, and to reconnect to his lost humanity and desire to make amends for time wasted. It's his psychotherapy, his hypnotic regression, his guilty conscience finally catching up with him. It can not be rushed through in three hours of one night.
And that said, I think we have yet to see the definitive version. In order to show Scrooge's transformation in a way that is real and honest, it would have to be done either as a three to four hour film, or as a miniseries.
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