As is usual around this time of year, Christmastime is here. As is also usual, another version of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is here, too. The latest producers of this old classic make the same claims--"biggest, best ... most authentic version ever filmed"--as their predecessors did, but they live up to them.

An English film, "A Christmas Carol" stars Alastair Sim as old Ebenezer Scrooge. Sims gives something to the word "humbug" that would warm Dickens' heart. His growling, penny-pinching version of the shrewd, hated money changer is so frighteningly rendered as to make the audience fidget like Bob Crachit, Scrooge's poor, hard-working clerk. Sim's conversion to a kind, happy man among men is neither maudlin nor unbelievably.

The rest of the cast gives the right Dickensian background to Sim's mutterings and prancings. Unlike most of the movie versions of "A Christmas Carol," this one suggests some of the philosophy that lies behind the happily-ever-after story. Scrooge becomes a "good" man by spending the money gleaned from his evil doings.

The Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge to the haunts of his boyhood and shows why Scrooge went bad--a father who hated him, a sister whose love for her husband killed her, and a growing realization that the world was a rough place. The Ghost of Christmas Present shows dishevelled, wide-eyed Scrooge, the pathetic picture of Bob Cratchit's family, which could be happy though poor. But most effective, both to Scrooge and the audience, is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come who never speaks but just points to Scrooge's old love (now working in a poor house), to Bob Crachit's family (mourning the death of Tiny Tim), and to the clincher--Scrooge's own grave. Here again we sense Dickens' suggestion that the strongest argument of all is still survival.

From Marley's ghost to Crachit's goose, the film is full of the kind of Christmas spirit that seems to be lost in today's world of Scrooges. One leaves the theatre singing carols, and wishing the usher a "good evening."