I thought it was time I finally watched a film, or something approximating thereto, cos otherwise my Letterboxd record for 2023 would’ve just been the Doctor Who specials… so I picked something suitable for the season, the evidently not terribly well-known BBC TV version from 1977 which I have as part of a DVD box set of assorted other BBC Dickens adaptations from the 80s and 90s. It’s very… mid-70s BBC, for want of a better description, weighing in under an hour and shot on video entirely in studio, which gives it a very particular visual and aural character (a fair bit of it uses candle lighting, which looks kind of delightful even on video). One of its technical tricks is the use of line illustrations combined with CSO, which makes for an interesting way of opening things up a bit albeit one that doesn’t entirely work; it’s kind of an experimental technique in an otherwise quite straight production, so it felt a bit out of place (and the limitations of CSO mean it’s particularly rough in the credits sequence).
It’s not bad as such but it’s also kind of dry, though it does conjure up a certain sort of Victorian gothic atmosphere, and Michael Hordern is very fine in the lead role (this was his third go round with his story, having been Marley’s ghost in the previous two). And, being under an hour long, I’ve seen some criticism that it wasn’t long enough, but to be honest I don’t think I would’ve wanted this to be any longer than it is.
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