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This is the only one ever made that feels like real life - specifically that a man could be so convincingly changed that he would wake up Christmas morning a different person, transformed by the night's apparitions.
All other Scrooges feel like a fairy tale that symbolizes the possibility of such change - but not the real thing.
Outside of the extraordinary acting capability of Alistair Sims, with his powerful fear and dread facial expressions, perhaps what makes it most real is that there were, even at the time of its creation, still lots of people alive who still believed in God in the ancient way.
Which meant God could strike fear in the hearts of all humans.
Science didn't become the compelling descriptor of reality until well after WWII, most likely the 60's, 70's and 80's.
Before the world wars, God was the all-powerful revealer of reality.
That made God as vividly terrifying as the hydrogen bomb was in the 80's.
When apparitions, real or unreal, occurred, it struck terror and dread in the hearts of humankind.
Scrooge had no choice but to believe - which meant he was compelled to do something about it.
Looked at in a modern psychological way, the spirits of Christmas dragged him through the traumas of his life, the death of his mother giving him birth, that made his father reject him, and the death of his sister, the only person who'd ever loved him; then his bitterness toward life which made him destroy the love of a wonderful woman.
But this is not a romantic movie like most of the rest, where everything turns out happy.
This is a movie about life and death, and how much one can lose when we take a wrong turn.
This is a story of real life, not a wish, or demand for happiness, resolving everything.
This is a movie about a time in life when people offered, upon being introduced, to be a servant to each other, not as a sign of subjugation, as we think about it now, but as an expression of respect, thoughtfulness and care.
What an extraordinarily different way of looking at being a servant.
But one that fits the time when life was very vulnerable, and needed what some could offer in the form of a quality of warmth and good will, which, in a world dominated by science, we try and imitate, but haven't learned to do so nearly as generously and graciously.
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