olderbutwiser

"A Christmas Carol" is 100 pages long and would take 2 hours to read, however it has generated so many variations on screen and stage(and probably the Internet). Here is the first animated one, after reading the original last year(cost 25 cents)I was surprised to find out that the cartoon version took great pains to preserve much of the exact wording of the novel. There is not even a hint that it is not the mid 1800s in the cartoon. One particular scene always gets me- the ghost of Christmas past's(a young boy or girl)face turns profoundly sad when Scrooge/Magoo sings "why such a lonely beach" and it seems like the ghost understands Scrooge's sadness. When you are a kid, there is NOTHING scarier than the ghost of Christmas future, and nothing more desolate than Scrooge/Magoo on the grave singing "I'm all alone in the world" with the camera panning the cemetery. A close second in scariness is when Marley jumps out the window(as a ghost) and bellows as he merges into all the other ghosts flying around London. Music, dialog, and even the chintzy animation is just right. I must go home and play my VHS tonight!

I certainly enjoyed it and found it on the obscure "Military Channel". Growing up in the 60s there was a steady stream of historical films about Pasteur, Reuters, Marconi that went totally over my head. I can recall endless medieval films on cold Sunday afternoons where i couldn't wait to have the channel turned. NOw as an adult I cherish gems such as this, where they took character actors(what good would Richard Gere have done as Woodrow Wilson)and had them act out the true life events of the time, interspersed with real footage. It amazed me to see Ho Chi Migh trying to get an audience with Wilson to get the French out of Indochina- how those two would intersect blew me away. WWI veterans dominated the world up to the mid 60's(Eisenhower, Churchill, Macarthur, etc.) so they went from the horse age to the space age. Ifthey really said what was said about a weakened Germany would be ripe for a demagogue then it just shows how important the study of history is. All in all a treasure