The silent film, released by the Edison Manufacturing Company on 23 December 1910, was directed by J. Searle Dawley – who also directed Ogle in Frankenstein.
There’s lots of versions of A Christmas Carol, but have you seen the first sound version – Scrooge 1935?
Seymour Hicks as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol 1935
Title: Scrooge Year Released: 1935 Director: Henry Edwards Cast: Seymour Hicks, Donald Calthrop, Robert Cochran, Mary Glynne
Alistair Sim is probably the most famous actor to have played a straight version of Ebenezer Scrooge (as opposed to the craziness of say, Bill Murray’s Scrooged, Michael Caine in A Muppet Christmas Carol or singing dancing Albert Finney in Scrooge (1970)).
But another actor deserves kudos for his portrayal of the Victorian miser who finds redemption through visits from Christmas Spirits – namely Sir Seymour Hicks.
Hicks was a long-time actor and music hall performer who first played Scrooge in the theatre in 1901.
He had played the role thousands of times by the time he appeared in the 1935 version.
He had played Scrooge in a 1913 British film version too. (Interestingly, theatres in London still operating were funded by Hicks namely The Aldwych Theatre and The Gielgud Theatre, the later was originally named the Hicks Theatre.)
The 1935 film has several differences to other versions of the novella, the most important being that the spirits – other than The Ghost of Christmas Present – are not shown in the film – only their voices are heard.
Inability to create the special effects has been cited as a reason for this, but I reckon this is unlikely as UK films had ghosts in them decades earlier.
Far more likely is that is certainly more spooky to only see a blurry image. The ghosts in subsequent versions of A Christmas Carol are almost comical, so not seeing them adds to the mystery.
The X-Rays 1897 is one of the earliest British spooky films in existence
Scene from The X-Rays 1897
TITLE: The X Rays YEAR RELEASED: 1897 DIRECTOR: George Albert Smith CAST: Tom Green and Laura Bayley
The X Rays 1897 Review
The X-Rays is a British short silent comedy film, which was directed by George Albert Smith in 1897. (It was released in October 1897.)
The film, which runs for under a minute, shows a courting couple, Tom Green and Laura Bayley, filmed in X Ray by a man with a camera labeled “X Rays”.
The film is one of the first British examples of a film using special effects using jump-cuts. The film jumps between the Victorian couple in their finest to their spooky skeleton selves, which looks very funny and kinda cool.
The short was filmed only two years after the discovery of X-rays by German physicist Wilhelm Rontgen in 1895.
While X-Rays is not particularly spooky, it is quite strange and involves skeletons – which is more than usual fare for Spooky Isles. Give it a look, you won’t be scared but you’ll have a laugh!
Tell us what you think of The X-Rays 1897 in the comments section below!
