Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist
Directed by	David Lean
Produced by	Ronald Neame Anthony Havelock-Allan
Written by	Screenplay: David Lean Stanley Haynes Novel: Charles Dickens
Starring	Alec Guinness Robert Newton Kay Walsh John Howard Davies Anthony Newley
Music by	Arnold Bax
Cinematography	Guy Green
Editing by	Jack Harris
Distributed by	Rank Organisation
Release date(s)	United Kingdom: June 30, 1948 United States: July 30, 1951
Running time	United Kingdom: 116 minutes United States: 105 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Oliver Twist (1948) is the second of David Lean's two film adaptations of Charles Dickens novels. Following the success of his 1946 version of Great Expectations, Lean re-assembled much of the same team for his adaptation of Dicken's 1838 novel, including producers Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan, cinematographer Guy Green, designer John Bryan and editor Jack Harris. Lean's then-wife, Kay Walsh, who had collaborated on the screenplay for Great Expectations, played the role of Nancy. John Howard Davies was cast as Oliver, while Alec Guinness portrayed Fagin.

In 1999,the British Film Institute placed it at 46th in its list of the top 100 British films.

Plot

A woman in labour makes her way to a parish workhouse and dies giving birth to Oliver Twist (John Howard Davies). As the years go by, Oliver and the rest of the child inmates suffer from the callous indifference of the officials in charge: beadle Mr. Bumble (Francis L. Sullivan) and matron Mrs. Corney (Mary Clare). At the age of nine, the hungry children draw straws; Oliver loses and has to ask for a second helping of gruel ("Please sir, I want some more").

For his impudence, he is promptly apprenticed to the undertaker Mr. Sowerberry (Gibb McLaughlin), from whom he receives somewhat better treatment. However, when another worker maligns his dead mother, Oliver flies into a rage and attacks him, earning the orphan a whipping.

Oliver runs away to London. The Artful Dodger (Anthony Newley), a skilled young pickpocket, notices him and takes him to Fagin (Alec Guinness), an old man who trains children to be pickpockets. Fagin sends Oliver to watch and learn as the Dodger and another boy try to rob Mr. Brownlow (Henry Stephenson), a rich, elderly gentleman. Their attempt is detected, but it is Oliver who is chased through the streets by a mob and arrested. Fortunately, a witness clears him. Mr. Brownlow takes a liking to the boy, and gives him a home. Oliver experiences the kind of happy life he has never had before, under the care of Mr. Brownlow and the loving housekeeper, Mrs. Bedwin (Amy Veness).

Meanwhile, Fagin is visited by the mysterious Monks (Ralph Truman), who has a strong interest in Oliver. He sends Monks to Bumble and Mrs. Corney (now Bumble's domineering wife); Monks buys from them the only thing that can identify Oliver's parentage, a locket containing his mother's portrait.

By chance, Fagin's associate, the vicious Bill Sikes (Robert Newton), and Sikes' kind-hearted girlfriend (and former Fagin pupil) Nancy (Kay Walsh) run into Oliver on the street and forcibly take him back to Fagin. Nancy feels pangs of guilt and, seeing a poster in which Mr. Brownlow offers a reward for Oliver's return, contacts the gentleman and promises to deliver Oliver the next day. The suspicious Fagin, however, has had the Dodger follow her. When Fagin informs Sikes, the latter becomes enraged and murders her, mistakenly believing that she has betrayed him.

The killing brings down the wrath of the public on the gang. Mr. Brownlow and the authorities rescue Oliver, while Sikes is shot and, because the rope is still around his neck, accidentally hangs himself trying to escape over the rooftop. Fagin and his other associates are rounded up. Monks' part in the proceedings is discovered, and he is arrested. He was trying to ensure his inheritance; Oliver, it turns out, is Mr. Brownlow's grandson.

Cast

• Alec Guinness as Fagin
• Robert Newton as Bill Sikes
• Kay Walsh as Nancy
• John Howard Davies as Oliver Twist
• Henry Stephenson as Mr. Brownlow
• Francis L. Sullivan as Mr. Bumble
• Anthony Newley as the Artful Dodger
• Ralph Truman as Monks
• Michael Dear as Noah Claypole, an undertaker's boy who angers Oliver
• Diana Dors as Charlotte
• Frederick Lloyd as Mr. Grimwig
• Mary Clare as Mrs. Corney
• Hattie Jacques as a pub singer

Differences from the novel

While in general faithful to the Dickens storyline, Lean's film omits the Rose Maylie sub-plot altogether. Instead, while Oliver is forced by Sikes to help him burgle a house, Nancy goes directly to Mr. Brownlow to warn him of the plot against the boy, and Fagin dispatches the Artful Dodger instead of Noah Claypole (who appears only in the early scenes) to spy on her. It is also Dodger, and not Charley Bates, who angrily gives up Sikes to the police. (He suffers remorse after discovering Nancy's dead body and realizing he has been an unintentional party to her murder.) Oliver returns safely from the burglary with Sikes, rather than being accidentally shot during the break-in. Nancy's best friend, Bet, is also omitted from this film. As in the later musical version, Nancy plans to return Oliver to Brownlow on London Bridge; however, she plans on doing so at noon instead of midnight (she intends to drug Sikes with laudanum, something she does not do in the musical). But in the David Lean film, she never even begins to set her plan in motion, because she is found out and murdered beforehand.

The boy dying of consumption and malnourishment in the workhouse, Dick, never appears in the film.

Unlike the novel, in which Nancy meets Oliver the day after he arrives at Fagin's and her sympathy for the boy is implied early in the story, she and Oliver do not even meet in the film until she helps to kidnap the boy; and although she defends him from Fagin's anger after the kidnapping, Oliver seems to still be unaware of any real concern she may have for him until late in the film, when he leaves with Sikes to commit the burglary. While wrapping a scarf around Oliver's neck prior to his leaving, she momentarily touches his cheek to silently reassure him, and he looks back at her in surprise as Sikes pushes him out the door. Unlike the novel, the musical, or many other film versions, Oliver is never shown displaying any feelings for Nancy one way or the other.

Agnes Fleming, Oliver's mother, is turned in the screenplay into Brownlow's daughter, rather than simply the paramour of Oliver's father.

Fagin's trial is not shown in the film, and his hanging is left unmentioned. Unlike the previous 1933 American film version, the 1948 film omits the scene with a semi-hysterical Fagin in his prison cell, awaiting his execution.

Oliver's father is never mentioned at all in the film, while in the book he was Mr. Brownlow's best friend.

Although the film includes the character of Monks, Oliver's half-brother, it is never explained in the script that Monks is the half-brother at all. He seems to be merely a mysterious stranger who turns up to make trouble for Oliver. The one clue to his identity is furnished when he says to Brownlow, "Is this a trick to deprive me of my inheritance?", and Brownlow replies "You have no inheritance, for as you know, my daughter had the child!" The terms of the will left by Oliver's father—that Oliver would be disinherited if he ever committed a criminal act—are also left unexplained.

Controversy

Alec Guinness's portrayal of Fagin was considered anti-semitic by some. Guinness wore heavy make-up, including a large prosthetic nose, to make him look like the character as he appeared in George Cruikshank's illustrations in the first edition of the novel. As a result of objections by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the New York Board of Rabbis, the film was not released in the United States until 1951, with seven minutes of profile shots and other parts of Guinness's performance cut.^{[citation needed]} It received great acclaim from critics, but, unlike Lean's Great Expectations, another Dickens adaptation, no Oscar nominations. The film was banned in Israel for anti-semitism and in Egypt for portraying Fagin too sympathetically.

Beginning in the 1970s, the full-length version of Lean's film began to be shown in the United States. It is that version which is now available on DVD.

References

• Vermilye, Jerry. (1978). The Great British Films. Citadel Press, pp. 117–120. ISBN 0-8065-0661-X.

External links

• Oliver Twist at the Internet Movie Database
• Oliver Twist at AllRovi
• Criterion Collection essay by Michael Sragow