utgard14 Early adaptation of the famous Dickens tale. I believe it's the earliest film version (that survived, at least). IMDb lists the runtime as 11 minutes but the only versions I could find were 3 minutes and change. They cram a lot into that 3 minutes. Points for that but I can't imagine any viewer who wasn't familiar with the story knowing what was going on. There are a few title cards but, again, unless you know the story already they don't explain much. So you have this guy being tormented by Christmas spirits with little explanation. There's clearly a lot missing. Still, the effort is good for its time and limitations and some of the technical stuff is impressive.

Byrdz The 1901 silent version of "A Christmas Carol"... who wudda thunk it ? Is the internet great or what ?This short (very short) films is known as "Scrooge; or Marley's Ghost". It's quite theatrical with what appears to be painted canvas (or cardboard) sets, very little story and a totally unidentified cast.It's terrific to be able to view what remains of what is said to be the earliest version of this Dicken's story.It has fewer than the usual number of ghosts but it does have "trick shots" with superimposed images.It's worth a look, movie history wise.

Lee Eisenberg The oldest surviving cinematic adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" is a very truncated version to the point that the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future don't even appear. Jacob Marley shows Ebenezer Scrooge what the latter needs to know. There's apparently no available info about who the cast is. Only about half the movie exists today, and I watched it on Wikipedia. I understand that a lot of movies during cinema's infancy were adaptations of classic novels so that viewers would already know the story and there would be limited need for intertitles.Aside from being the oldest surviving adaptation of Dickens's classic novel, there's nothing particularly special about "Scrooge; or Marley's Ghost". It's actually based more on J.C. Buckstone's stage adaptation "Scrooge". I'll forgive it for looking like it does - the background looks painted - since movies were just getting off the ground. My favorite adaptation of Dickens's novel remains "Scrooged", starring Bill Murray as a greedy TV exec (one of the lines describes a TV ad as "the Manson family Christmas").Anyway, it's an OK movie.

MartinHafer I am not going to give this film a numerical score, as the film is very incomplete. Like so many old films made on nitrate film stock, much of the film has been lost. What remains is highly abbreviated and makes little sense unless you know the story (and today who doesn't?). In addition, films made around that time were VERY short and abbreviated to begin with--so you have a film that has limited watchability today. You can't blame the film makers for all this--this is true of many films of the era.The film begins as Scrooge approaches his house and Marley's ghost appears on the door knocker. Using superimposed images, this and the appearances of Christmas ghosts are pretty good--especially for 1901. Scrooge then eats his dinner and falls asleep--at which point the first ghost appears and shows his what seem to be random images. The film then indicates that part 3 follows--and you are left assuming part 2 was partially skipped (especially the intertitle card indicating part 2 had begun). Part 4 is poorly done--as the intertitle card pretty much says it all BEFORE you see any of the action. This describing everything before it occurs was actually very common in 1901 but it sure took out any sense of suspense! And finally, the ending is completely missing.What you have is a reasonably well made film. Considering most films made about 1901 showed very mundane things (people eating, trains arriving at the station, etc.), this is a nice attempt to tell a story. And, the camera-work for the time is good. But, on the other hand, only about half of the original film still exists and unless you are dying to see what is perhaps the first Scrooge on film, I suggest you watch only if you are a die-hard cinephile.