Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost (1901)

Original title

Scrooge; or Marley's Ghost

Directed by

Walter R. Booth

Genre

drama film, fantasy, silent film, horror film, Christmas film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

11 min

Rated

G

Rating

5.7 of 10 from 38 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A miserly old man is visited by the ghost of his dead business partner and shown visions of his past, present, and future. The film uses special effects to create ghostly images and supernatural scenes.

old-fashionedstagedtrick-filledbriefghostlysymbolicearly-cinema

What happens

Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost is a 1901 British silent trick film directed by Walter R. Booth, featuring the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge (played by Daniel Smith) confronted by Jacob Marley's ghost and given visions of Christmas past, present, and future. It is the earliest film adaptation of Charles Dickens's 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. It was also believed to be the earliest filmed adaptation of a Dickens work, until the 2012 discovery of the Bleak House-inspired The Death of Poor Joe. The film, "although somewhat flat and stage-bound to modern eyes," according to Ewan Davidson of British Film Institute's Screenonline, "was an ambitious undertaking at the time," as, "not only did it attempt to tell an 80 page story in five minutes, but it featured impressive trick effects, superimposing Marley's face over the door knocker and the scenes from his youth over a black curtain in Scrooge's bedroom." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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• A Christmas Carol (1908)
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• Santa Claus (1898)
• A Christmas Carol (1910)