"Life is cause and effect. And you certainly are no stranger to the cause."
So says the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, aka the Quartermaster of Karma, in 1979's An American Christmas Carol.
As a Dickens scholar, this made-for-television movie – currently available "free with ads" from YouTube, as well as on DVD – puts me in an awkward position. It's from the 70s. It's American (more or less; we'll come to that). It's inspired by, though not entirely based on, a Dickens story that was already fine to begin with.
And it's also better than the source material in several important ways.
That's right, I said it.
From the top, let's put away one common fallacy: AACC is not a version, adaptation, or update of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's written as if the writers had never heard the Dickens story, were handed a one-paragraph synopsis of the plot, and told "Go!'. And everything about it works, from the concept, to the casting, to the wintry grey Canadian locations.
In it, Henry Winkler is one Benedict Slade, American boy, grown up through a harsh if unexplicated late 19th century childhood into wealth and bitterness. And now he's floating in the sea of suffering known as the Great Depression, and hogging the lifeboat all to himself. And damned sure he has every right.
The plot's rural New Hampshire setting is brilliant; a small town works much better for this than London, which may come off like a small town in Dickens, but it's not. A provincial miser is not only more conspicuous than an urban one, he's also in a stronger position to influence outcomes, for good or ill. And as a stage for rationalised selfishness in the face of full-spectrum need, the Dirty Thirties are a no-brainer.
Even more gratifying is the way the film's writers have amended certain shortcomings of the Dickens story. Slade quotes economic theory as if it were God's (or even science's) word. And after conversion he remains gruff, laconic, socially awkward, and highly competent, rather than becoming a loony old fool. Finally, the changes he makes are much more realistic and uplifting.
For our Mr. Slade doesn't wait for the new year, or even Boxing Day, to pitch in to the possible. He's out there in the piercing Christmas morning cold, rousting Thatcher, his much-abused clerk, out of his own heartbroken home and forcing him back to work.
Yet somehow Thatcher – whom Slade promises a tidy overtime – doesn't seem to mind, as he drives his employer, Grinch-fashion, from house to blighted house across a bleak landscape, returning and refinancing repossessions. One of which includes a family's freakin' woodstove!
In the midst of a New England winter!
In sum, Benedict Slade is simply much more interesting, and more believable, than Ebenezer Scrooge. (Sorry, Chuck!)
The cast, all but three of whom are Canadian with accents intact, is brilliant. The other two Yanks – David Wayne and Dorian Harwood – are particularly solid in their respective pivotal dual roles. In the Canadian box we have R.H. Thomson's sensitive turn as Thatcher (who apparently has no first name), Friday the 13th's Chris Wiggins as the man who saves young Benedict from an even grimmer future, and, in a rare early appearance… Luba Goy! Look for her in the bonfire scene at about the 1:14:30 mark. Fifteen seconds later she will shout "Eighty-five!"
And, gosh Henry Winkler is outstanding! Young actor, playing a character aging through multiple eras, giving as nuanced a performance as you'll see anywhere. I particularly like his take on Slade's soul. The complex old codger is neither stupid nor ultimately a coward; even in petulance you see a glimmer of irony in his eyes. He knows he's running a scam. On himself as much as the others.
For all this, AACC suffers surprisingly in some corners of the Reviloverse, usually at the hands of people who know little or nothing about Dickens or the original they claim to prefer. Some are offended that the lead appeared in a sitcom. Should any of them stumble in here, perhaps they might meditate on the difference between an actor and his character. As a Zenner might put it, "Whose name is in the credits?"
Not that there aren't some bona fide holes, of course. Of these the worst is the protagonist's age. As we learn, Slade was in his 30s during the Great War, so he couldn't be much more than 55 in the Depression. Yet Winkler's made up twenty years older than that.
And that's a shame, because a Slade just starting to anticipate the last act of his life would have been a richer premise.
There are smaller humbugs. The writers didn't grok inflation. The sum raised at a war bond drive is breathtakingly high in-world, to say nothing of the bids offered at a Depression auction. And for this country boy, the sight of workmen wrestling a hot iron stove – still smoking! – out the door in their leather gloves was not only surrealistic, it amounted to another missed opportunity. How much more dramatic to use 2X4s – the way that's really done – to carry a family's warm literal hearth away over Ontario's frozen December snowfields.
But none of that depreciates the work. I'm astonished to hear commentators sneer down this truly worthwhile experiment as "the dumbest Dickens adaptation ever".
First of all, it's not; I could write a book about the total crap passing for Dickens out there.
And second, it's not. As in not Dickens. It's a little different, and a little better.
So this holiday season, give An American Christmas Carol a stream. Unless you're as bitter as Benedict Slade, you'll be glad you did.
I've been a huge Dickens fanboy since a Christmas in high school when I decided to read his most famous story. You know, from an actual book. The kind with no battery.
That was the initial infection. By the end of my undergraduate years I'd read every novel, travelogue, and short story Dickens ever wrote. Followed, in the throes of detox, by several biographies and critical essays, including Orwell's succinct and brilliant analysis of Dickens' place in British culture.
But since those student days I've wanted to write a sequel – more properly, a conclusion – to his most famous work. Because the man left A Christmas Carol unfinished.
In it, as you will recall, bitter old miser Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by four ghosts – or one ghost and three bodhisattvas – who convince him to lay off being a bitter old miser. (Note that in so doing, Dickens invents psychoanalysis fifty years before the fact. Further proof of his visionary genius.)
The story closes on that catharsis, as Scrooge becomes slightly foolish and a lot nicer to those in his circle, and, we're assured, faithfully keeps Christmas to the end of his days.
And there Charles Dickens abandons his greatest novel, leaving us with nothing more than this uplifting but ultimately anæmic introduction.
And they call Edwin Drood a tragedy!
Because what Dickens takes to his own grave is the story of how Scrooge's overdue rejection of the scarcity model went on to raise a swelling wave of economic and social development, the force of which was still carrying, not just Tim Cratchit, but indeed Tim's great-grandchildren, generations thence.
The belief that greed and stinginess are good business was coin of the realm in Dickens' day, as it remains in ours. But there's no evidence that this pat excuse for egotism is exact.
Fact is, having this reality abruptly kicked up his backside by his business partner and three unrelenting enforcers, my man Ben (who was, lest we forget, uncommon sharp) re-entered the world on the day after New Year's and started ploughing wealth into the neighbourhood: creating infrastructure, developing resources, improving standards, and generating something vastly more valuable than simple jobs: opportunity.
And that's not all. He also straight-up turned Queen's Evidence, plying his legendary flint and synoptic command of commercial law to defend the exploited from the predators he used to ride with. Soon those former homies just stood down when they learned Scrooge and Marley Ltd had the account; you don't win against those odds. Because S&M (you thought that name was a coincidence?) will bulldog you on every point until you never even recoup your losses, let alone profit.
And the ironic part is that Scrooge actually got richer for all of this. Probably a lot richer. Because a lot of competent people who'd only served to keep him in gruel prior to that haunted Christmas Eve were paying their rent and thinking bigger.
If the Ghosts of Christmas had thought it through, they would have added some economics to that field trip through his life. Asked him how his amiable and generous old employer Feziwig got so prosperous; shown him what a waste of earning potential were all those ruined present lives; and especially, how rich he totally wasn't by the hour of his death. Scrooge dies in the same crappy flat, surrounded by the same paltry rubbish. If he'd made more money, it hadn't accomplished anything. Not even for him.
In the end, it's just a total waste to have a guy like Scrooge simply stand down.
Because if it's true that the first thing you do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging, it is as well that in that moment you find yourself standing beside (or beneath) a pile of soil, holding a shovel.
My thoughts this holiday season; may they be worth the penny.
Wishing us every one the happiest of Yules, and a fruitful new year.
(1915 Arthur Rankham illustration of Jacob Marley auditing Scrooge ["Business? Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"] courtesy of William Pearl and Wikimedia Commons.)
