7.8 | / 10 |
Users | 4.8 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
In 1860, the stingy and cranky Ebenezer Scrooge that hates Christmas; loathes people and defends the decrease of the surplus of poor population runs his bank exploiting his employee Bob Cratchit and clients, giving a bitter treatment to his own nephew and acquaintances. However, in the Christmas Eve, he is visited by the doomed ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley that tells him that three spirits would visit him that night. The first one, the spirit of past Christmas, recalls his miserable youth when he lost his only love due to his greed; the spirit of the present Christmas shows him the poor situation of Bob's family and how joyful life may be; and the spirit of future Christmas shows his fate.
Starring: Albert Finney, Alec Guinness, Edith Evans, Kenneth More, Gordon JacksonFamily | 100% |
Musical | 75% |
Holiday | 74% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Fantasy | Insignificant |
Video codec: VC-1
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
English SDH, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Did Leslie Bricusse single-handedly kill the film musical? For those of you who don’t recognize the name Leslie Bricusse, he is one of the most successful composer-lyricists of the 20th century and first came to prominence in a storied collaboration with actor-composer-lyricist Anthony Newley. Newley and Bricusse revolutionized the British musical in the early 1960’s with two massive hits, Stop the World—I Want to Get Off and The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd, both of which matriculated to the Great White Way with substantial success. It’s arguable that from a pop hit standpoint, Newley-Bricusse were the reigning champs of theatrical writers of their era, easily eclipsing better known teams like Kander and Ebb or Bock and Harnick just in sheer numbers of Hot 100 hits of their tunes. Those two Newley-Bricusse musicals alone provided a huge number of singles for various artists, songs that have since entered the lexicon of pop standards and many of which are still routinely performed today. “What Kind of Fool Am I?” “Who Can I Turn To?,” “Gonna Build a Mountain,” “A Wonderful Day Like Today,” “The Joker,” and “Once in a Lifetime” all came from those two shows. (Pop culture trivia moment: “Feeling Good,” the tune Jennifer Hudson is warbling in her melismatic sonic orgasm in those Weight Watchers commercials, is also a Newley-Bricusse gem from Greasepaint). Newley and Bricusse continued to collaborate, providing lyrics together for such phenomena as John Barry’s “Goldfinger,” as well as a wealth of other huge hits. But in the mid-sixties, Bricusse decided he wanted to prove himself as his own double (perhaps triple) threat, breaking away from Newley and increasingly working by himself. (He provided the lyric to another Bond theme, “You Only Live Twice,” by himself, not to mention a wealth of other mid- to late-sixties film themes, including the glorious pop tune culled from Jerry Goldsmith’s theme for The Sand Pebbles). In 1967, Bricusse’s first foray as composer-lyricist-scenarist, the lumbering Fox musical version of Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison, opened to largely disparaging reviews and disastrous box office returns. Two years later, Bricusse adapted another British literary classic, James Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips, once again providing music and lyrics (with none other than Terrence Ratigan writing the screenplay), a film which helped pound a few more nails into the coffin M-G-M had been constructing for itself. And just to make sure no one could accuse him of not at least attempting a trifecta, in 1970 Bricusse adapted perhaps the most iconic British literary endeavor of all time, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, this time providing all three functions—composing, lyric writing, screenplay authoring—once again.
The musical version, retitled (as so many adaptations of the source novella have been through the years) Scrooge, was easily the most successful of Bricusse’s three major film musicals of the era. While Doctor Dolittle had managed to cop a couple of handfuls of Oscar nominations (winning a Best Song statuette for Bricusse for “Talk to the Animals”) due to Fox’s more than a little desperate campaign to get the film a Best Picture nom (which in fact it did, against considerable odds), and Goodbye, Mr. Chips grabbed nominations for the stellar work of star Peter O’Toole and a perfunctory nomination for Bricusse’s song score and John Williams’ gorgeous orchestrations, both films had massively tanked at the box office, putting their respective studios in rather severe financial straits. Scrooge on the other hand was a rather substantial hit, though one that once again received critical brickbats for Bricusse’s score, balanced by glowing reviews for star Albert Finney’s incredible turn as Ebenezer Scrooge. (Scuttlebutt that year had Finney the early favorite to bring home a Best Actor Oscar for his performance, but he ended up not even garnering a nomination). In the intervening years, however, there have been two camps reassessing Bricusse’s contributions to the art of the film musical. One group decries Bricusse’s efforts as second rate stuff, often very glossy and beautifully produced, but lacking finesse and musical craft. Others find Bricusse’s approach rather substantially artful, moving the fusty movie musical genre gently forward by introducing such then unheard of ideas as sung interior monologues into the mix of what had largely been up to then a “stop the plot, let’s sing a song now” mode of making movie musicals.
Scrooge is presented on Blu-ray with a VC-1 encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. The good news is this is easily the best Scrooge has ever looked on home video. The image is considerably sharper and better defined now, with well saturated color and often excellent fine detail. Fleshtones still tend to be skewed somewhat toward the yellow side of things, at least some of the time (especially in the early sequences), and crush is still fairly evident in many of the dimly lit scenes, especially in the dark streets of London and Scrooge's sparsely illuminated mansion. All of the special effects with young and old Scrooge side by side were obviously opticals done with double printing and therefore grain is noticeably more apparent. There is also occasional flicker throughout the film, but it's not overly debilitating. The print is virtually damage free, though there was one fairly noticeable scratch (probably less than a second) and couple of white flecks marring the image. Overall, though, things are suitably sharp and very well defined, with grain intact and a very filmic look to this presentation.
Scrooge, much like another late-sixties British film musical, Oliver!, always suffered from a strangely "cramped" sounding audio mix, and the good news is that somewhat muffled sound is completely gone from this glorious new lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. Bricusse utilizes a large amount of antiphonal singing throughout his score to Scrooge, and the separation of soloists and even choirs who are singing "against" each other is very artfully rendered on the 5.1 track. Best of all are Ian Fraser's beautiful orchestrations, which evoke Christmas with lots of colorful effects like glockenspiels and bells. Dynamic range is also very, very good, capturing everything from Scrooge's remorseful whispers as he begins to regret his life decisions to the thundering sounds of church chimes which nearly deafen the unbelieving Scrooge when Marley is about to make his entrance. The surround channels are very well utilized for the score, and occasionally for other effects as well (listen to the nice panning effect when the apparition of the funeral cortege occurs early in the film). Dialogue is crisp and clear, and the entire mix is extremely well prioritized.
Update: There has been some consternation about what constitutes an Overture for Scrooge. As a longtime fan of the film I am well aware that the film initially had an Overture, an orchestral prelude featuring a medley of the film's songs, which was included on the Original Soundtrack LP and the previous DVD release. However, my particular DVD of this film had a "Play Film With Overture" option which simply started the film from the credits, with the choral underscore of "A Christmas Carol." After repeatedly trying this option, I determined my DVD has an authoring error, and approximately every third time or so it actually does go to the "Overture," otherwise it starts with the film's beginning credits. The Blu-ray does not contain the Overture in any way, shape or form. The Blu-ray also features the Exit Music, an orchestral reprise of "Thank You Very Much."
Theatrical Trailer (HD; 3:25)
Leslie Bricusse was probably laughing all the way to the bank even as various critics were taking him to task for supposedly ruining various iconic literary masterpieces with ostensibly misbegotten musical adaptations. Time may not have been entirely kind to Bricusse (who nonetheless continued to write film and stage musicals, even reteaming with Newley for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, as well as retooling Scrooge for the stage), but from the vantage point now of several decades, all three of his big film musicals have at least a few things to recommend them. In the case of Scrooge, there are certainly more than a few things, including Finney's incomparable performance as the title character. Even those who don't normally like film musicals may find themselves enchanted with this particular adaptation, which looks very good and sounds great on Blu-ray. Highly recommended.
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