After the acclaim he got in the supporting role of Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations, David Lean decided to use Alec Guinness in a starring role in his next masterpiece. Which turned out to be another Dickens story with Guinness playing Fagin in Oliver Twist.
It was not an automatic casting however, other people were considered. But according to a recent biography of Alec Guinness, he won the part by appearing in the full Fagin makeup you see on the screen with that unforgettable Cyrano like nose with a hook in it. He also spoke in that mincing lisp and Lean was sold.
The portrait of Fagin raised a great hue and cry about it being so good that it was encouraging anti-Semitism, not something the post World War II world wanted to deal with. And the lisp and the mincing walk also had a nice subtext of homophobia with Fagin and his crew of young juvenile thieves. All around it got plenty of criticism, Oliver Twist was not released in the USA until three years later and then with significant cuts in Guinness's role.
Whereas Guinness just went outrageously overboard in his acting, he was matched every step of the way by the menacing Robert Newton as Bill Sikes one of the slimiest villains in all of literature. Newton as Sikes is a totally ruthless character and scare the audience as he frightens the rest of the cast.
My favorite though is Kay Walsh as Nancy Brown, Sikes's luckless girlfriend. The only character you can compare Nancy to that comes to mind is another woman from 19th century London who fell victim to an evil man is Champagne Ivy in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In the musical Oliver the big hit song from it is As Long As He Needs Me which is Nancy's number. She sings it about her love for her evil fellow, you can almost hear it in the background. What a payoff this poor woman gets for her love when she develops a conscience.
Charles Dickens certainly liked stories about young men who by an unseen fate first get cast down and then in the end triumph over adversity, by their own efforts, but also by events they have no control over. Oliver Twist fits right in with Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and Martin Chuzzlewit in that way.
This version still remains the definitive adaption of a classic story and you kids should see this if you don't want to wade through the book for your English class.
It was not an automatic casting however, other people were considered. But according to a recent biography of Alec Guinness, he won the part by appearing in the full Fagin makeup you see on the screen with that unforgettable Cyrano like nose with a hook in it. He also spoke in that mincing lisp and Lean was sold.
The portrait of Fagin raised a great hue and cry about it being so good that it was encouraging anti-Semitism, not something the post World War II world wanted to deal with. And the lisp and the mincing walk also had a nice subtext of homophobia with Fagin and his crew of young juvenile thieves. All around it got plenty of criticism, Oliver Twist was not released in the USA until three years later and then with significant cuts in Guinness's role.
Whereas Guinness just went outrageously overboard in his acting, he was matched every step of the way by the menacing Robert Newton as Bill Sikes one of the slimiest villains in all of literature. Newton as Sikes is a totally ruthless character and scare the audience as he frightens the rest of the cast.
My favorite though is Kay Walsh as Nancy Brown, Sikes's luckless girlfriend. The only character you can compare Nancy to that comes to mind is another woman from 19th century London who fell victim to an evil man is Champagne Ivy in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In the musical Oliver the big hit song from it is As Long As He Needs Me which is Nancy's number. She sings it about her love for her evil fellow, you can almost hear it in the background. What a payoff this poor woman gets for her love when she develops a conscience.
Charles Dickens certainly liked stories about young men who by an unseen fate first get cast down and then in the end triumph over adversity, by their own efforts, but also by events they have no control over. Oliver Twist fits right in with Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and Martin Chuzzlewit in that way.
This version still remains the definitive adaption of a classic story and you kids should see this if you don't want to wade through the book for your English class.