David Copperfield (1935)

After reading David Copperfield, I decided to revisit the classic 1935 version of the film, which I believe I saw many years ago on TV, but can't swear to it. There have been many film and TV adaptations of the book, but this is the best known, directed by George Cukor and featuring many stars. It also, audaciously, adapts a 1,000 page book into a little over two hours and hardly loses a thing.

The film was adapted by Hugh Walpole and Howard Estabrook, who have a lot of condensing to do. The major plot points are there--David is born posthumously, and his starchy aunt Betsey Trotwood (Edna May Oliver) attends the birth but turns on her heels after learning it's a boy. His delicate mother (Elizabeth Allan) dotes on him, but she marries a severe disciplinarian, Mr. Murdstone (Basil Rathbone), who beats the poor boy.

Eventually David's mother dies in childbirth and David is put to work in Murdstone's factory. He's miserable, but he does meet the delightful Mr. Micawber (W.C. Fields, in a casting masterstroke), a verbose gent who is perpetually hounded by creditors. After Micawber is sent to debtor's prison, David runs away, and his taken in by Oliver. The scene in which she decides to keep him away from Murdstone and his equally horrid sister is done resoundingly well.

We then follow David as an adult, where he goes to work for Mr. Wickfield and meets the obsequious Uriah Heep (Roland Young). He will also befriend Wickfield's daughter Agnes (Madge Evans), whom he loves like a sister, but marry the frivolous Dora (Maureen O'Sullivan). In the book, David works for Dora's father, but here he meets her at the ballet, and is aided by his school chum Steerforth, who is introduced in the film much later than the book.

Another plot line will involve Steerforth when he seduces David's childhood friend, Emily, and her uncle, Dan Peggotty (Lionel Barrymore) will search for her.

There's a lot of plot here, and much of the book is left out, but the cuts are judicious. I imagine a multi-episode miniseries covers everything, but Cukor keeps the pace brisk and the dialogue is rich.

Dickens is best known to modern audiences for his characters. We may not remember the plots of the books, but we remember characters like Fagin, The Artful Dodger, Mrs. Havisham, Madame Defarge, Ebenezer Scrooge, etc. David Copperfield has a number of vivid characters, but most notably Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Micawber, and both are given the appropriately larger than life performances they need. Oliver, a character actress of some renown but not great beauty, once answered why she played so many comedic roles with, "With a horse's face, what else could I play?"

The film is buoyed by Fields, though. He is able to play his usual persona without departing from the text, as if Dickens had anticipated him. Originally, the part was to have been played by Charles Laughton, who withdrew. Fields couldn't really do an English accent, so he did his usual drawl and it worked just fine. He was not allowed to ad lib, but the verbosity of the language suits him. For example, as he his arrested for debt: "Copperfield, you perceive before you, the shattered fragments of a temple once call Man. The blossom is blighted. The leaf is withered. The God of Day goes down upon the dreary scene. In short, I am forever floored."

Micawber is an optimist who never allows himself to get too down, and sees promise on the horizon. His worldview is summed up in a way that I think works for all of us: "Annual income, 20 pounds, annual expenditure 19 pounds, result: happiness. Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditure, 21 pounds, result: misery."