There was some question at the time of its release about whether David Lean could follow through on the success of "Great Expectations." No problem. He does just fine.
Maybe it lacks the almost supernal fright quotient of "Great Expectations" opening scene in the graveyard, but it still starts off with a fully pregnant woman dashing alone through a pounding torrent of rain and banging on the gates of a Poorhouse, which is itself pretty gripping.
And, frankly, I think the story is a little stronger in "Oliver Twist" than in "Great Expectations", although they share common themes. Oliver is an interesting kid and we follow him through various adventures (mostly bad) during his childhood, starting in the workhouse and orphanage where he is raised. When he runs away he falls in with a scurrilous bunch of thieves among whom there is no honor. Fagin (Guiness) has organized a dozen or so street urchins into a gang of young ripoff artists and pickpockets. The growling and evil Bill Sikes (Newton) seems to be their fence. We also get a glimpse of a chubby, pretty young Diana Dors who was to become something of a Brit sex bomb a few years later.
The characters have memorable names that have entered the English vocabulary -- Fagin, Mr. Bumble the Beadle, Mr. Sowerberry the Undertaker, the Artful Dodger. And there are memorable lines. Oliver is chosen to protest that the orphanage doesn't give them enough gruel. "Please, sir, I want some more." The best line, though, is given I think by Mr. Bumble. His villainy exposed, the bursting Mr. Bumble shouts at the police that the whole business was his wife's idea. He's told that at the very least he is complicit, and that the law always assumes that a man is responsible for the acts of his wife since the husband is the dominant partner. "If THAT is the law, sir, then the law is a ASS!" Amen.
Dickens may have been a humanitarian but he was not a fool. The poor are not turned into saints, and the better off are not all heavies. These are some mean streets down which Oliver must walk. Crooked too, and cobblestoned. Picturesque, kind of. Never has poverty been so starkly but appealingly photographed.
The two Dickens movies came out at about the beginning of David Lean's career and, looking back over his entire oeuvre, it's hard to see what they have in common except a kind of micromanagement of details in the art direction and photography. Everything was required to be exactly right in order for him to be satisfied. As his films grew more expansive, so did the landscapes. But the issues his movies deal with are all over the board, social inequality, balked romance, war movies, racism.
He could be a terrible guy to work for, impatient and insulting. When Alec Guiness stepped of the airplane for the location shooting on "A Passage to India," Lean greeted him sourly with, "I was hoping to get someone else for your part." Yet, what a legacy Lean left behind. "Oliver Twist" is fully up to our expectations.
Maybe it lacks the almost supernal fright quotient of "Great Expectations" opening scene in the graveyard, but it still starts off with a fully pregnant woman dashing alone through a pounding torrent of rain and banging on the gates of a Poorhouse, which is itself pretty gripping.
And, frankly, I think the story is a little stronger in "Oliver Twist" than in "Great Expectations", although they share common themes. Oliver is an interesting kid and we follow him through various adventures (mostly bad) during his childhood, starting in the workhouse and orphanage where he is raised. When he runs away he falls in with a scurrilous bunch of thieves among whom there is no honor. Fagin (Guiness) has organized a dozen or so street urchins into a gang of young ripoff artists and pickpockets. The growling and evil Bill Sikes (Newton) seems to be their fence. We also get a glimpse of a chubby, pretty young Diana Dors who was to become something of a Brit sex bomb a few years later.
The characters have memorable names that have entered the English vocabulary -- Fagin, Mr. Bumble the Beadle, Mr. Sowerberry the Undertaker, the Artful Dodger. And there are memorable lines. Oliver is chosen to protest that the orphanage doesn't give them enough gruel. "Please, sir, I want some more." The best line, though, is given I think by Mr. Bumble. His villainy exposed, the bursting Mr. Bumble shouts at the police that the whole business was his wife's idea. He's told that at the very least he is complicit, and that the law always assumes that a man is responsible for the acts of his wife since the husband is the dominant partner. "If THAT is the law, sir, then the law is a ASS!" Amen.
Dickens may have been a humanitarian but he was not a fool. The poor are not turned into saints, and the better off are not all heavies. These are some mean streets down which Oliver must walk. Crooked too, and cobblestoned. Picturesque, kind of. Never has poverty been so starkly but appealingly photographed.
The two Dickens movies came out at about the beginning of David Lean's career and, looking back over his entire oeuvre, it's hard to see what they have in common except a kind of micromanagement of details in the art direction and photography. Everything was required to be exactly right in order for him to be satisfied. As his films grew more expansive, so did the landscapes. But the issues his movies deal with are all over the board, social inequality, balked romance, war movies, racism.
He could be a terrible guy to work for, impatient and insulting. When Alec Guiness stepped of the airplane for the location shooting on "A Passage to India," Lean greeted him sourly with, "I was hoping to get someone else for your part." Yet, what a legacy Lean left behind. "Oliver Twist" is fully up to our expectations.