Did you know the first Titanic film was released just two weeks after the fated ship sank?
While the first film adaptation of A Christmas Carol didn't come out QUITE as soon after Charles Dickens' ghostly novella was published in 1843, it still arrived early on in the history of moving pictures — and was made in London.
'Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost' hit screens in 1901 — a 35mm film from Paul's Animatograph Works, based in Muswell Hill, north London. The company was established by pioneer R. W. Paul, a man with his finger decidedly on the pulse of the moving picture industry. At the very same time the Lumiere Brothers were bewitching Londoners at the Royal Polytechnic Institution with their films, Paul was demonstrating the Theatograph, "Britain's first film projector". Paul's wife, Ellen, co-ran the studios and even appeared in the occasional title.
Employing dozens of people at the height of its success, Paul's Animatograph Works earned the nickname 'Hollywood on the Hill', and between 1898 and 1909 made some 800 films (naturally far shorter than today's feature lengths), including 2 a.m. or The Husband’s Return, in which a leathered husband returns to his wife after a night on the tiles.
Of all the films made by Paul's Animatograph Works, though, Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost is of most historic importance. True, the film — directed by Walter R. Booth, and with an actor called Daniel Smith in the titular role — is no The Muppet Christmas Carol. Packing Dickens' 80-page tale into a quixotically brisk six minutes, 20 seconds is no mean feat — certainly no scope for shots of the infamous miser sailing above Victorian chimney pots, or outbreaks of musical numbers about the sanctity of Christmas.
Through modern eyes, the set reeks of an am-dram panto, while the acting's hammier than Peppa Pig tucking into a tin of Spam. The triptych of ghosts — Christmas Past, Present and Future — are subbed out for Marley's ghost, who does all the virtuous spooking. Audiences at the time, though, would've been somewhat more wowed. Director Booth was a dab hand at trick photography, and pulls off the ambitious feat of superimposing Marley's face over a door knocker — as per Scrooge's initial ghostly encounter in the book — a now iconic concept, which audiences would've seen for the first time here. In another then-futuristic ploy, spectral vignettes of Scrooge's past play out in front of him. As well as being the oldest surviving film version of A Christmas Carol, this is the first film to use intertitles — a technique that went on to be used widely in silent film.
It probably isn't going to become a new festive tradition of yours to gather in front of Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost every year with friends, mulled wine and popcorn. But as a Christmas curiosity, it's worth watching once, to see the film that paved the way for later adaptations which would prove timeless.
