Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

A Masterpiece!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This movie presents the problems of the world and posits the UN as a possible solution. Hayden's character is a rich man who hates war. He beliefs in NOT fighting the world's battles.The other characters treat him in a contemptuous manner - as if most of the world starving is HIS fault. The blame him for enjoying life while others are starving.The basic idea is that as long as governments talk, they will not fight. In reality, wars are fought for gain. The only thing we can do is stay out of world affairs as much as we can and make sure that our enemies do not dare attack us. If a rich man gave away all his money, nothing would be accomplished. It is not the fault of an isolationist if people are starving. It is the fault of dictatorships.The heavy handed idiotic portrayal of the problems of the world must be seen to be believed.The only subtlety is in the ending where our protagonist decides to give the UN a chance. Would that the rest of the film was written as well.

This is a nontraditional version of Dicken's story, a Xerox special made to promote the United Nations.It features Sterling Hayden, Eva Marie Saint, Ben Gazzara, and many more leading actors of the day.The message of the film is simple: when we stop talking wars begin. We can no longer be isolationists. The fate of the world rests in the hands of all of us.50 years after this film was made, nothing much has changed. We still refuse to care about those we cannot see. We celebrate 9/11 because 3000 died, while we ignore the fact that 20000 die every single day due to starvation and disease.

I remember seeing the film when it came out and then saw it again in late 2013 on Turner Classic Movies. In 1964 I was excited that it represented the pairing of a noted film director, Joseph Mankiewicz, fresh off his frustrating experience directing the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton Cleopatra (1963), and Rod Serling, fresh from the CBS TV series, The Twilight Zone (1959-1963), which he had created, wrote for, and hosted. As the title suggests, it was a modern version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.It had an all-star cast: Sterling Hayden as the Scrooge character called Grudge, Pat Hingle as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Steve Lawrence as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Eva Marie Saint as an nurse from Grudge's past, Robert Shaw as the Ghost of Christmas Future, and Peter Fonda, son of Henry Fonda, as Grudge's nephew. Fonda's scenes were cut to just glimpses of him, and in five years he would have an iconic role as a biker in Easy Rider. The actor who received the most press was Peter Sellers, who had debuted his character of Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther the year before and then had a heart attack. Carol marked his return to work. He would then co-star with Hayden in Dr. Strangelove.The filmmakers even went to the trouble of reuniting the Andrew Sisters to re-record their 1942 hit number "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree," which is only heard in the film when a ghostly record player suddenly starts playing the recording, until Grudge pulls the needle off after a few seconds.On its website, Turner Classic Movies invites you to tell it what little-seen films you would like them to show, and I kept writing in Carol for Another Christmas. Others must have too because they finally broadcast it.I guess I was in love with the idea of it in 1964. On my re-seeing it, I felt Carol doesn't play well.The idea of pairing Mankiewicz and Serling was not a good one. They both had their preachy sides. Some of the Serling's Twilight Zone scripts represent the most searching and, sometimes, the most disturbing science fiction dramas ever made. But he did use the show to comment on issues such as racism, McCarthyism, and other isms that troubled the 1950s and 1960s, and his characters do seem to like the sounds of their own voices. Serling's screenplay for Seven Days in May the same year as Carol also has long stretches of dialog, but it was propelled forward by director John Frankenheimer, who plays with images within images, especially by showing television monitors all around, and a really top-notch cast.Mankiewicz loved to hear his characters talk too, as his screenplays for All About Eve, Letter to Three Wives, and certainly the four-hour Cleopatra show. With Serling and Mankiewicz together, Carol goes on and on without seeming to move forward. It ends when the characters stop talking.Part of the problem is the source material. A Christmas Carol has demonstrated that it can be remade and rethought again and again. This version was sponsored by the United Nations, who had its own story to tell about its role in the world. And so Serling had to tell the story not only of a man who hated Christmas but of a man whose war experience--and the death of his nephew on Christmas--caused him to become an isolationist and to resist the idea that nations and peoples can come together by talking. The two different concepts--I hate Christmas because I remember sad Christmases of my past, and I hate Christmas because it reminds me of war and I think our country should just stay to itself--do not really mesh.The film only comes to life at the end in the apocalyptic landscape Serling was familiar with from The Twilight Zone, with Shaw as a well-spoken specter and Sellers as a crazy leader of the survivors of nuclear war. But overall, Carol is just a curiosity, a side-note to the careers of Serling and Sellers.

Made just after the financial disaster of "Cleopatra" -one of the most unfairly underrated movies of all time,at least in its four-hour version-by Mankiewicz.It's an updated Dickens' "a Xmas carol" with a "modern " uncle Scroodge ;one can notice that the "don't be selfish,open up,don't get caught up in the "me" machine was also treated by Frank Capra in his (certainly more palatable) "it's a wonderful life" .This is a movie which concerns today's audience ,in spite of its dated details ;more than ever we must help our fellow men and not hide our heads in the sand even when we feel like letting everything down.When the second ghost talks about the hungry people in the world,he's speaking to all of us;it's not surprising that the only man who rebels against the Imperial Me is a black man (and his wife).There's a stellar cast featuring Sterling Hayden as the lead and Eva Marie-Saint,Robert Shaw,Ben Gazarra as the nephew ,Peter Sellers and more ...