Darlene Vile
You won't find a meaner Scrooge, nor a sadder, more pitiable Bob Cratchit. One can't help thinking that the more popular Reginald Owens version, made only three short years later in 1938, was a direct reaction to this rather morose, gritty adaptation. Sir Seymour Hicks gives his absolute all to playing the miserable Scrooge to the point of confusing the actor with the character. His harsh, lonely life and the cruelness of his words and actions, so naturally delivered by Hicks, all makes for a dramatic transformation indeed. My only complaint, however, concerns the shortcuts taken to avoid using special effects, no matter how simple. For instance, making Marley's ghost invisible, even to the audience, rather than employing the time period's usual trick of character transparency. It robs us of the powerful effect of Marley ghost, the chained and tortured dreadful apparition. These matters are not quite enough to knock off a whole star from my review--a half star, yes. But it would take much more than that to ruin this charmingly disturbing old movie.