Great Expectations (1946)

David Lean was a great film director, but his greatest talent may have been adapting great literature. It isn't easy to take a big fat novel by Charles Dickens and trim it down to a two-hour movie that makes sense and flows along trippingly, but he did just that with Great Expectations, made in 1946. I think I enjoyed it even more having read the novel a few weeks ago, so I could see how skillfully Lean and his screenwriters winnowed the story.

Most of the basics are there--a young man, Pip by name, grows up with his mean sister and her kindly husband, Joe (Bernard Miles) a blacksmith. In the first scene (spookily photographed by Guy Green, who won an Oscar for it), he is accosted by an escaped convict while visiting his parents' grave. The convict (Finlay Currie) is menacing, but when Pip returns the next day with a file and some food, the convict is grateful.

Pip then is employed, so to speak, by a local eccentric woman, Miss Havisham (Martita Hall), who lives in a grand house but never goes outside. She has tried to stop time as it was on her wedding day, when she was spurned by her fiance, going so far as to always wearing her wedding dress and leaving the banquet table as it was, cake and all, even as it gnawed by mice (the film also won an Oscar for Best Art Direction). At Miss Havisham's he meets Estella, her adopted daughter, (Jean Simmons) who is mean and haughty to him but he falls in love with her just the same.

As a young man he learns that he has an anonymous benefactor, whose lawyer (Francis L. Sullivan, in a wonderful performance) serves as his guardian. He rooms with Herbert Pocket (an absurdly young looking Alec Guinness), and becomes a gentleman. He also, by his own admission, becomes a snob, and when Miles comes to visit he is embarrassed. When he learns who his benefactor is (I won't reveal it here) he is drawn into a dangerous plot.

Of course, much of the story is excised, as only a miniseries could encompass everything. The entire subplot involving Orlick is cut. Also, Pip is spared treating Biddie terribly--in the film, she is older than he is, and there is no sense that she is the right woman for him, while chasing Estella is a waste of time. In fact, the ending gives Pip and Estella a chance, and while that may be infuriating to Dickens' purists, I thought the angle that Lean took--that Estella was slipping into living just like Miss Havisham, was a sensational approach.

So kids, if you have a book report due on Great Expectations, you might try to watch the movie instead, but be warned there are enough differences that could get you in trouble. You will see a wonderful film, though.