Oliver Twist: The Criterion Collection

Lean captures the atmosphere of the tale perfectly with stark black and images that will haunt your mind's eye, while Bernard Herrmann presents a wonderfully classic score. One musical highlight is when Fagin teaches Oliver the finer points of pickpocketing with a wonderfully amusing demonstration. Lean's direction also keeps the moving as a good clip, while not sacrificing the finer points of his narrative.

As for the casting, they do a wonderful job to the point of seeming to come bounding out of the page itself. Francis Sullivan is perfect as the blustery beadle of the workhouse, Mr. Bumble. Robert Newton (years before he would ham it up as Long John Silver for Disney's TREASURE ISLAND) turns in a dark and violent turn as the thuggish Bill Sikes. Kay Walsh is equal parts steel and heartache as the ill-fated Nancy. John Howard Davies (who would eventually become a famed British television producer) is touching as the title character, without becoming too saccharine. Henry Stephenson makes for a warm and caring Mr. Brownlow. A very young Anthony Newley makes a strong impression as the fantastic Artful Dodger. But, in the end, it is Alec Guinness's controversial performance of the master thief, Fagin, that will linger in the memory. In unrecognizable make-up designed to make him look the worst Jewish stereotype, combined with a mincing, lisping manner, Guinness creates a truly slimy and disturbing character that generates controversy to this very day. Indeed, when the film was first released in 1948, many critics were up-in-arms over the seeming anti-Semitic portrayal of Fagin to the point that the film wasn't allowed in the US until 1951, when some small cuts of Guinness' performance were made.

There have been many other versions of this classic drama, ranging from the solid Lon Chaney/Jackie Coogan silent, to the wonderful 1968 musical OLIVER!, to the rather limp Disney remake. But, this one has stood the test of time as the definitive version. As such, this is a must see film for all fans of Dickens' work and one that I give one of my highest recommendations.

This film, directed by David Lean is also bsed on the famous Charles Dickens novel, based on the popularity of Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, it is a wonder he didn't do A Christmas Carol also.

Having not read the novel I cannot determine how close the film is to it. The plot is probably too well known for a summary to be necessary.

The acting is quite impressive also. There was a controversy over Alec Guiness' portrayal of Fagin. While the makeup is impressive, The charater's Jewishness and the very large nose on the makeup labeled the filmmakers as anti-Semitic. The extras casting for the climax of the film is well done also.

There is also an egregious flub in the film. When Oliver faints in the courtroom the POV camera overshoots the set.

There is only a theatrical trailer as a special feature on this release but it still is a good movie.

David Lean's version of the book is one of the great post-war British films. Shot in expressionist black and white, Oliver Twist doesn't shy away from the nasty bits of the underworld life that Oliver is forced into. Robert Newton's Sykes gleams with a psychotic edge, and Anthony Newley's Dodger leaps from the screen like Dicken's makes him rise from the page. James Newton Howard, as the poor but blonde lad, looks wan, pathetic, and suitably aristocratic among the unwashed. (Howard survived the experience and grew up to produce the well-beloved Monty Python)

The sets are spectactular and well-detailed. I should like you to notice the street band that appears in several scenes looking moldy and playing with resigned anger. The claustrophic slums of London are dark, dusty, and muddy all once, and when the sun pentrates the mire, it is so strange that it transforms the squalor into beauty. This is Lean's black and white masterpiece. The sequence where Sykes beats Nancy to death is one of Lean's best. The terror of Bulldog is moving, and after the beating, when Sykes opens the window and the morning sun bursts in is filmmaking at its best.

Lean also manages to cut the book without losing the essense of the story: the plot against Oliver by a userper who stands to inheirit Brown's estate if Oliver is surpressed. This greedy man conspires with the Beadle and with Fagan to get rid of the Oliver. Lean compresses this material well; the best scenes remain. The fall of Bumble and his wife is still one of the great scenes of all times. "The Law, sir, is an ass. The law, sir, is a bachelor."

Now to Alec Guiness's Fagan. Anti-semiticism was so ingrained in Britian that neither Lean nor Guiness saw anything wrong with making Fagan into a Nazi's dream of a Jew. Made up in a fright wig and a nose that longer than anything outside of a puppet show, Guiness presents Fagan's charm and evil as he would have played Shylock, the uncious cheat, liar, and villian, corrupter of children and receiver of stolen goods. Indeed, in the catalog of villians in English literature Fagan is second only to Shylock. So outrageous did post-Holocaust audiences find this Fagan, the film's distributor cut some of the more disturbing close-ups for American audiences.

Even Dickens realized he had gone too far back in the 1830's: he wrote wholly good, kind, and emasculated Jewish characters in later books, but the damage was done. Fagan is at no time presented as a relious Jew; even as he awaits hanging, he refuses to see Rabbis who come to him. Fagan is also somewhat psychotic, and collapses mentally the night before he hangs. To many people in the Europe Fagan and Shylock represented the Jewish People, not Moses, Albert Einstein or Moses Montefiore. This is a legacy of misunderstanding and hate with with we Red Sea Pedestrians must deal with every day.

This is great filmmaking and one of my favorite films. "Oliver Twist" is one of Lean's great films, and certainly the finest interpretation of Dickens on-screen, but the sorrow, the pity, the death camps, the suicide bombers, and 2000 years of violence against my people cannot be ignored simply because this is a work of art.

I watch it and weep.