25 Greatest Christmas Films: #16 — A Christmas Carol (1938)

Purists tend to hate this adaptation, and while it’s hard to blame them on those grounds, MGM’s warmly produced version of the Dickens’ classic offers a number of charms the more respected darker and deeper versions do not. Namely, it is bursting with an ebullient Christmas spirit and has no agenda other than to immerse you in the flavor of the season courtesy of the studio’s beautifully designed back-lot and a wonderful cast of character actors.

Of the many fine film and television portrayals of Bob Cratchit, the indomitable spirit of Gene Lockhart’s interpretation sets the bar for all the others. He’s the heart and soul of the film, and the pathos always simmering just beneath a bubbly exterior – the lost and confused eyes of a good but helpless man in an impossible situation – never fails to get to me. I doubt Lockhart was a method actor, but it couldn’t have hurt his performance that his real life wife (Kathleen) and their daughter (June of “Lost In Space” fame) play his wife and daughter onscreen. (more…)