Oliver Twist (1948)

I grew up with the musical film version of Oliver Twist, so when I actually read the book I was confused, as the plot was very much different. The 1948 version of the book, directed by David Lean, is much closer to the subsequent musical, a streamlining of the plot that makes much more sense and is much more palatable. It's not every day that one can say there was an improvement on Dickens, but here it is.

The script was written by Lean and Stanley Haynes, and starts with a scintillating prologue of sorts, as Oliver's mother stumbles her way through a rainstorm to the workhouse, where she will give birth to her baby and die. This scene is shot almost like something out of a Universal horror film, with flashes of lightning revealing where she is going.

The workhouse, as I'm reading in another book right now, was a horror of its own. Poverty, never a good thing under any circumstances, was particularly harsh in England during the 19th century. Children are put to hard labor in rooms where banal platitudes like "God Is Good" are written on the walls. The board members, dining on sumptuous meals while the workers get thin gruel, think their charity is too kind.

The familiar plot kicks in when young Oliver, now nine years old, draws the short straw and asks for more food. He is sold to an undertaker, beats up an older boy for insulting his mother, and hoofs it to London, where he falls in with a gang of pickpockets, run by Fagin (Alec Guinness). On his first thieving run, Oliver is caught but his kindly victim (Henry Stephenson) takes him in. His associate, Bill Sikes (Robert Newton), one of the scariest villains in English literature, kidnaps the boy back, so he can't reveal what he knows about the criminal enterprise. Sikes' wife Nancy (Kay Walsh), feels guilty and tips Stephenson off, but pays for it as Sikes murders her. But Sikes' dog leads authorities to Fagin's hideout, and after a rooftop chase, Oliver is saved.

This story has inspired many, and Lean's version shows us why. The musical makes Fagin and Nancy a little more cuddly. In this version, Nancy isn't as sunny as she is in the musical, and is portrayed more as a pathetic example of growing up on the streets. Fagin, in Dickens, is Jewish, and though that isn't mentioned in the film, Guinness is given such a ridiculously large nose that Israel wouldn't allow the film to be shown there (it wasn't shown in the U.S. until 1951, and even then had scenes of Guinness in profile excised). Although Fagin is a father figure to the boys, he turns them on in a blink of an eye.

This was the second of Lean's Dickens adaptations, after Great Expectations, and it's a shame he didn't do more, as this film is so luscious. The lighting is brilliant, occasionally just candelight, and you can almost feel the grime and smell the mold. Anthony Newley, who would go on to be a great singer and songwriter, plays the Artful Dodger, again much grittier than Jack Wild played him in the musical. John Howard Davies is Oliver, with a naturally sad face.

Guinness' nose is unfortunate--others tried to dissuade Lean from using it but he persisted--but it can't diminish the greatness of this film. Along with Great Expectations, these are the two best (non-musical) adaptations of Dickens.