OLIVER TWIST (1948)

Whether done ‘straight’ or ‘crooked,’ only Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL vies with Charles Dickens’ OLIVER TWIST in film adaptations.  (Or does Christ & Co. beat Dickens?)  Two versions stand out; David Lean: finely polished, dark & terrifying in ‘48; Carol Reed: lightened less than you imagine by musicalization, dark & terrifying in ‘68.  (The latter recently given an astonishing digital restoration if you can find it.)  Sticking with Lean, TWIST, following his triumphant GREAT EXPECTATIONS/’46, post-graduation Dickens after 3 hits & a miss with Nöel Coward, proved a surprisingly tough sell.  The orphans looking like Concentration Camp survivors (still a fresh memory); the violence harrowing (Nancy’s murder, barely seen, yet beyond gruesome thanks to Bill Sykes’ dog); Fagin’s problematic ‘Jewish’ makeup, faithful to original Dickens’ illustrator George Cruikshank, but looking like a Nazi propaganda poster.*  Yikes!  Yet, the film is a magnificent achievement, besting EXPECTATIONS with a plus perfect cast in a subtly stylized, charcoal-etched Victorian England, its story neatly trimmed of serial bloat & repetition.  Fully complimentary with the musical, the difference in tone controlled not so much thru song as by age, with a crucial two or three year difference between Lean’s kids and Reed’s.  Think of OLIVER! as the ‘white meat’ quarter (plus a less outrageous shnozz on Fagin)/Lean offering the gamier leg/thigh portion.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Roman Polanski’s much anticipated 2005 attempt sadly bland.  Instead, note similarities in Luis Buñuel’s Mexican masterpiece, LOS OLVIDADOS/’50.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/oliver-twist-2005.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/03/los-olvidados-aka-forgotten-ones-young.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *After a 12 minute edit, TWIST showed up Stateside in 1951 with Alec Guinness’s Fagin shorn of anything humanizing, but with nose intact.