1948: Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist (Lean, 1948) 8/10

"Please Sir, I want some more" (Oliver Twist)

It is arguably the most iconic demand in British literature. A simple request made by a starving orphaned guttersnipe desperate to nourish his empty stomach. Relayed in David Lean's 1948 adaptation, the second of his Dickens' transfers, this scene is imbued with powerful resonance and shrouded in Wellesian imagery.

Contemporary audiences who recognize and associate Lean's name with illustrious, exotic epics such as Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge On The River Kwai and Dr. Zhivago will see the customary Cinemascope expansiveness of those films, replaced by claustrophobic close-ups and dystopic bedevilled imagery.

Starting in a grimy Dickensian workhouse, the runtish Oliver (John Howard Davies) is transferred to a local undertaker due to his dissenting behaviour at the dinner table. After being the target of abuse from the home's other servants, the boy escapes to London and is taking in by a group of street urchins and pickpockets lead by the Artful Dodger (Anthony Newley). The latter is in the employment of a trio of criminal adults Bill Sikes (Robert Newton), Nancy (Kay Walsh) and Fagin (Alec Guinness) who utilize orphaned boys to commit petty crimes and return with the loot.

But Oliver is unable to make the transistion to this life of crime: resulting in a botched attempt to pickpocket a gentleman outside a fruit stand. Assaulted by the ensuing mob, Oliver is aided by a wealthy elderly gentleman who takes him in; but fails to realize the extent to which Oliver's former associates want their prized asset back.

Like Lean's earlier films such as the Nöel Coward co-directed In Which We Serve, the George Bernard Shaw adaptation Major Barbara and This Happy Breed, Oliver Twist dissects concepts of Britain's rigid post-war class system. Transposing this argument into his Victorian setting, Lean is able to show the cultural trappings which repress and surpress working-class individuals. Lacking an academic education, Oliver is assigned a trade through the Christian workhouse in order to provide him an opportunity in life.

Yet, this technical education is entirely form-fitted for sweaty industrial labour. Nor, is it completed as Oliver soon enrolls into Fagin's pickpocketing program. Here, Oliver learns real survival skills that enable him to perform his new "trade" through criminal activity. Furthermore, his options for ascension within the underworld appear greater than in the glass ceiling society surrounding him. It is only after his adoption by a kindly upper-bourgeois elder that he receives an education capable of allowing him to transcend class barriers.

Within his analysis of the insulated class-based communities, Lean critiques the abusive interactions between adults and children. Throughout Oliver Twist, adults abuse their power against defenceless youths for profit. Francis L. Sullivan's rotund Mr. Bumble exemplifies this societial corruption. Charged in a position of responsibility for orphaned youths, Bumble regularly threatens them for the most basic insubordinate acts. Furthermore, Bumble along with a group of other adults attempt to financially gain from the mysterious mutterings of a dying woman associated with Oliver's deceased mother.

Yet, the most overt examples of child abuse in the film are at the hand's of the film's three working-class thugs: Fagin, Bill Sikes and Nancy. Taking advantage of their follower's destitution, the group operates uncustomary adult relationships with the children. Allowing them a fragile sense of empowerment in a repressive society through their clandestine thefts on the upper-class, the adults are equally vengeful toward their subjects: threatening them to extract information and berating them for failures. Yet, despite their abilities to engage in childish humour, the adults fail to recognize at times that their employed youth are still under twelve: a fact denoted by the children's cries when a lamp becomes extinguished in a dark hideout.

Surrounded by decaying buildings, the perfectly constructed sets by art director John Bryan enliven a world possibly all too familiar to Lean's audience. With countless antiquated Victorian homes still existing in London's East End during this period, there was arguably a sense of realism to the impoverished and pulverized world Oliver resides within.Yet, in a post-war Europe still tattered and broken from the horrors of war, British critics were dismayed at Lean's second Dickens adaptation.

Some complained the picture did not reach the calibre of Lean's earlier Great Expectations; others claimed the film encouraged pickpocketing among youths; while cinematically aligned other parties raged against Lean's decision to direct another Victorian novel whilst Neo-Realist filmmakers in Italy were discussing genuine poverty and urban decay. At the Venice Film Festival, the film did marginally better garnering the Golden Lion and upon its importation into the United States the film received strong reviews, but none of the award nominations Great Expectations had accrued.

In the United States, the film's release was delayed by four years due to complaints of anti-Semetism focusing on Alec Guinness' portrayal of Jewish criminal kingpin Fagin. Utilizing George Cruikshank's original illustrations, Guinness morphed into an almost unrecognizable figure replete with a gargantuan beaked nose, scraggily hair and a wart-strewn face. After excising almost twelve minutes from the film, the picture was released in America with an uncut edition released in 1970.

Guinness' Fagin is a remarkable creation: an example of his unrivaled ability to morph into an array of offbeat characters, a talent he later perfected in Robert Hamer's Kind Hearts and Coronets. Ironically, despite the criticism from critics sympathetic to Zionist causes, British critics of the period slammed the film for supposedly downplaying the personalities and the sheer cruelty enacted by Fagin, Bill Sikes and Nancy: despite the film's infamous and artfully concocted bludgeoning of Nancy by a furious Sikes.

Scenes such as the latter are bathed in a sinister afterglow of German Expressionist influenced light and shadows and Wellesian close-ups. Beginning with the film's tempetuous opening-suggested by Lean's then-wife Kay Walsh- the director foreshadows a world of poverty and pain. Following a pregnant woman across a windswept moor, cinematographer Guy Green's black and white camera captures the blackened sky with tenacity and fervor. Shot using tight mid-shots and high angles, Lean's film is filled with other memorable sequences such as Oliver's trek up a flight of stairs, the mug of beer tossed at Newton's Sikes and the dimly-lit meetings between characters on London Bridge.

Honed with remarkable craftsmanship, David Lean's Oliver Twist is a textbook example of how to turn a literary masterpiece into a cinematic one. With superb performances by the aggressive Newton, Walsh, youngsters Davies and Newley and most notably Alec Guinness as Fagin, Oliver Twist features one of the most impressive acting ensembles assembled in British cinema history. Additionally, the astutely constructed sets by John Bryan and visuals by Guy Green are testament to a film as aesthetically pleasing as it is brilliantly acted.

One of the best British films ever released.

* Oliver Twist is available on R1 DVD through Criterion Home Video and on R2 in a "Double Bill" with Lean's Great Expectations through ITV

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque