Scrooge in Color: Why Does Everything Look Like a Tinted Postcard?

Should you watch Scrooge in Color? Honestly, only if you are a completionist who needs to see every version of this story ever made. If you like your movies to look like a fever dream filtered through a vintage photo booth, you might find some charm here. Everyone else will probably spend the first twenty minutes staring at the weird skin tones and wondering why the snow looks like it’s made of yellow dust.

Seymour Hicks as Scrooge is doing some heavy lifting, but the colorization process just makes him look like he’s got a perpetual case of indigestion. It’s distracting. You spend so much time looking at the awkward blue shadows that you lose track of the actual acting. 🎨

The ghosts look especially strange. They seem to hover in this weird layer of artificial saturation that doesn't quite match the sets. It’s like watching a cut-out paper doll move across a painted background. Sometimes, the colors just bleed right over the edges of their coats.

It reminded me a bit of the frantic energy in Paramount on Parade, where everything is just a little too loud and bright for its own good. But here, it’s just plain exhausting.

The scene where the Ghost of Christmas Past shows up is particularly jarring. The flicker rate on the color is almost hypnotic in a bad way. It made me want to go back and watch a clean black-and-white print just to let my eyes rest. 💤

The Good and the Weird

• The sets actually look kind of cool when the color isn't trying to fight the original lighting.
• Hicks is still a classic Scrooge, even if he looks like a walking peach at times.
• Some of the outdoor shots look surprisingly okay, like a postcard you'd find at a flea market.

Is it better than the original? No. It’s just different. It’s like taking a perfectly fine painting and coloring it in with markers because you were bored on a Sunday afternoon. 🖍️

I found myself missing the grit of older films. Everything here feels polished in a way that feels dishonest. It's a weird artifact of film history, sure, but I wouldn't call it essential viewing. It’s just… there.