A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol centres on Ebenezer Scrooge, a wealthy London miser who cares only for money and treats everyone around him with contempt. He has cut himself off from friends and rejected his only relative, his nephew Fred, and he resents Christmas as a waste of time and money. On Christmas Eve he grudgingly gives his clerk Bob Cratchit the day off. That night the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley appears and urges him to change his ways, warning that three spirits will visit him. Those spirits show Scrooge his past, the present lives of those around him and a possible future, forcing him to confront what his greed has cost him and whether he can still change.

The film is an adaptation of Charles Dickens's 1843 novella, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in December 1938. Edwin L. Marin directed it; by that point in his career it was roughly his fifth feature, following films such as Bombay Mail and Pursuit, and he went on to direct Gold Rush Maisie, Invisible Agent and Abilene Town. Hugo Butler wrote the screenplay and Joseph L. Mankiewicz produced. Reginald Owen plays Scrooge, with Gene Lockhart as Bob Cratchit, Terry Kilburn as Tiny Tim, Barry MacKay as Fred, Lynne Carver as Fred's fiancee Bess and Leo G. Carroll as Marley's Ghost, among a credited cast of twenty-nine.

At 69 minutes it is a compact telling of the story. On IMDb it holds a 7.5 rating from around 10,000 votes, while on TMDB it has a 7 from about 155 votes. A critics' rating of 7.3 from thirteen reviews places it close to the audience scores.