CINEMA
Cashing in on Christmas
CHRISTOPHER HUDSON
It is difficult to be miserly about Scrooge (Dominion) which will give a lot of pleasure to countless children and a lot of money to that notable pauper Twentieth Century-Fox. Nobody has excelled Dickens in cashing in on the mixture of nostalgia, sentimental re- ligiosity and fuddled goodwill that afflicts the British over the Christmas season; and producers have been turning gratefully to 'A Christmas Carol' since 1908 when the story was filmed for the first time (twice again in the five years that followed!). And now the traditional ingredients have been stirred round and presented more richly than
ever. Victorian London suddenly turns into a vast street-market laden with turkeys and pastries. Wares are hawked, lights glisten on the snow and the scrubbed faces of child- ren, and carriages rattle past with their bells ringing. Every now and then these pic- turesque people drop everything and march off down the streets, singing in unison and leaping about between the tilting houses. I kept on expecting them to collide with a procession from Oliver! going the other way. There are two particularly good things about Scrooge, and these make it a film worth seeing. The first is the musical sequen- ces, which slide in and out of the narrative with astonishing facility. They are set to music by the producer. Leslie Bricusse, whose songs are unmemorable but easy on the ear. The second is the acting of Albert Finney as Scrooge, which is remarkably good. His Scrooge is, one might say, the definitive Scrooge of our times; a Scrooge prematurely aged. with bleary eyes and creaking joints, who is transformed quite believably over the course- of the film into a spry, benign Pickwick figure skipping down the street radiating goodwill on all filaments. Finney is a masterly actor and a joy to watch, whether sorting through his coins with trem- bling, careful fingers. or sitting with a fatuous smile on his mantelpiece, legs dangling, hap- pily drunk on the milk of human kindness provided by the Ghost of Christmas Present (Kenneth More).
In general, the photography is striking and the special effects convincing, especially when Scrooge and the Ghost of his partner Jacob Marley (Alec Guinness) swoop and soar through a sky peopled with spectral corpses. The calculated effects have their usual, cal- culated effect, most of it centred upon Tiny Tim, a find for any soap-powder advertise- ment. who warbles away on crutches to the tearful enjoyment of one and all. Ronald Neame's direction gives the whole thing verve and pace; and' as a fine piece of com- mercial merrymaking Fm sure it will come round Christmas after Christmas.
Warner Brothers have rushed The Last Warrior into their West End cinema to re- place There Was A Crooked Man. It stars Anthony Quinn in one of his boring, Rabel- aisian roles as an Indian on a us reservation who decides he's been pushed around long enough. Much footage of pushing, shoving and bellowing later, he is shot while leading a peaceable march through a nearby town to claim it as Indian territory. In between, he drives a shoveller off a cliff, diverts a train, tames a wild stallion, and generally cavorts in a suitably spectacular fashion. Supporting him, all the new Hollywood stereotypes put in an appearance—the sneering, bigoted police chief, the decent white man who de- serts to the minority side, and the whore who packs a punch, here played with obvious enjoyment by Shelley Winters, swinging her handbag like a sock of cement powder. All that can be said in the film's favour is that Indian oppression is a better bandwagon than many, and no attempt is made to provide a happy ending and turn the whole issue into a comforting fantasy for viewers. Carol Reed directed, I'm sorry to say.
The Last Warrior is paired with an appal- ling Bugs Bunny episode. It consists entirely of animated knights in armour bashing one another over the head, to the accompaniment of inane dialogue. If this kind of thing makes American audiences laugh, they must be a very happy people. More likely, they have it forced down their throats by the distribu- tion people, and receive it in the same gloomy silence as their counterparts over here.
It is worth mentioning, finally, that a highly entertaining season at the National Film Theatre opens in early December. Claude Chabrol and Andrzej Wajda are both given full retrospectives, and at the NFr2, not before time. season of fourteen Michael Powell films is showing, including the fas- cinating and grotesque Peeping Tom.
Albert Finney's Scrooge
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