Underplayed Gems

Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost (1901)

Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost poster
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
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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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)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.