![]() ![]() The generous six-hour runtime allows for the re-insertion of moments and characters that had been omitted from all previous adaptations, such as the chimney sweep who unsuccessfully lobbies to apprentice Oliver before he’s purchased by Mr. Produced by Terrance Dicks ( Doctor Who, the 1986 David Copperfield), this version more than any other presents Dickens’ original tale in its full glory. Now we come to what is probably my favorite Oliver adaptation, the 1985 twelve-part serial for BBC television. But in its day Oliver! was a massive critical and commercial success, nominated for eleven Academy Awards and winning six, including Best Picture and Best Director, and inspiring one of the best-ever A Christmas Carol adaptations, the musical Scrooge (1970) with Albert Finney and Sir Alec Guinness. Because the movie musical has fallen out of fashion, this element of the film has not aged well. Other songs, however, seem to exist solely to pad out the film’s runtime, with fruit-sellers and acrobats somersaulting improbably through London streets for what feels like forever. Every few minutes the story is interrupted by a spontaneous crowd song, the best of which-“ You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two” and Nancy’s “ It’s a Fine Life”-serve to introduce important characters. Everyone sings in this movie: the orphans sing as they sit down to their gruel the paupers sing as they sell their wares. And because this plot by itself could barely fill a two-hour movie, there is a lot of singing. What remains is a story of growing tension between Oliver and Bill Sikes and Nancy, who seeks to rescue Oliver and return him to the kindly Mr. Rose is barely seen Monks is omitted entirely. ![]() Lean’s pragmatic distillation of the novel would prove hugely influential Sir Carol Reed cited the 1948 Oliver as an inspiration for his 1968 musical retelling, Oliver! Reed goes much further than any previous version, in fact, in excising from the narrative any extraneous characters or subplots. The new state of Israel banned the film, but so did the state of Egypt-for portraying Fagin sympathetically. Yet the warmth of Guinness’s portrayal somewhat mitigated the accusations of antisemitism. Lean’s decision to give Fagin an offensively large prosthetic nose (against the advice of both Sir Alec Guinness and the film’s Jewish makeup artist) can make for uncomfortable viewing. With his stooped shoulders, comically large beard and twinkly eyes, he draws laughs with his slightest gesture. Sir Alec Guinness (a Lean regular he had played Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations) finds the whimsy and humanity in Fagin’s malevolence. Visually this version has no equal Lean’s innovative compositions and chiaroscuro cinematography turn Oliver’s travails into an expressionistic nightmare. Slightly less successful, though still a minor masterpiece of cinema, is Oliver Twist (1948). His Great Expectations (1946) remains the best adaptation of that story. Its major weakness is the location shooting one never forgets for a moment that Oliver is walking on American roads beneath American skies.īritish director David Lean has some claim to being the definitive director of Dickens. As a relic of early cinema it holds up surprisingly well. Lon Chaney plays Fagin as a feral creature, more monster than man, who seems to have been birthed fully formed from the London fog. Physically the cherub-cheeked Jackie Coogan ( The Kid) is a bad fit for the titular waif, but his large eyes and look of perpetual surprise help sell the character. In the restored film ( freely available on YouTube), the crispness of the black-and-white cinematography is remarkable. Most notable among the half-dozen or so early attempts is Frank Lloyd’s Oliver Twist (1922), a silent film thought to be lost for over fifty years until a print was discovered in Yugoslavia in 1973. It was both the first Dickens novel to be adapted for film and the first Dickens novel to be adapted for sound film. This cinematic quality has made the story irresistible for filmmakers. The workhouse, Fagin’s den, the death of Bill Sikes have become part of our shared cultural inheritance. In terms of cinematic images per page it’s rivaled only by A Tale of Two Cities. We’ve talked before on this blog about the visual nature of Oliver Twist. ![]()
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