Oliver Twist is David Lean's follow up to his successful adaptation of Great Expectations. A lot of the same cast and crew work on both films, so there's a nice consistency between the two. However, and this is a problem when viewing the Criterion Collection in order, when you watch these films back to back, you really feel the similarities and Oliver Twist kind of suffers for it. I think that, had there been a gap of several movies between the two, I may have viewed this movie in a fresher light. But immediately following Great Expectations? I'm just about done with orphans.
It doesn't help that the title character is dull in the extreme. John Howard Davies is just a blank canvas to bounce the other characters off of, with his only highlight being a scene early on where he beats the shit out of someone who's talking smack about his dead mother. Aside from that, he's just this adorable looking boy who goes from one location to another while various scumbags are plotting all around him. Alec Guinness is at his Shylock best as Fagin, looking disturbing as hell while teaching the street urchins how to properly pick pockets. Francis Sullivan is back, this time as a mean fat dude who likes beating the kids in his orphanage, and while he has some good scenes, he's not as fun as he was in Great Expectations.
Really, most of the praise I had for Great Expectations could easily be transferred over here. Lean's direction is brilliant, the film looks gorgeous, the cast is excellent overall, and it works both as a film and as an adaptation of a classic novel. My main problem seems to be orphan fatigue and also that I just don't find this story as compelling as Great Expectations. It's alright, but I'm already sick of the super mega happy orphan ending that Dickens uses. Also, how happy am I supposed to be for Oliver when he's barely in the movie during the second half? We're mostly privy to scheming assholes and murder, and while it's good stuff, it's also hard to maintain an interest in the lead. That's what I was feeling anyhow. I want to come back to this one later, but right now I don't want to see another Dickens adaptation for awhile.
It seems obvious that I'm going to rank this lower than Great Expectations, but I don't want to put this one too low because I honestly feel that external factors are weighing in on how I viewed this movie. I really want to give it another shot at some point because I don't know how much of my reaction was based on seeing it so soon after the previous film. It could just be that this particular story didn't connect with me all that much. Give me something like Ragged Dick over this, or a story where the orphan plays a larger role in the direction of his life outside of just running away from an abusive home. Fuck it. For now, I'm putting this at #27, just below Amarcord. I feel like I have similar issues with both of these films, but I liked Amarcord a bit more. Maybe it's just the tobacconist.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Robocop (1987)
3. Seven Samurai (1954)
4. The Seventh Seal (1957)
5. M (1931)
6. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
7. Grand Illusion (1937)
8. High and Low (1963)
9. Shock Corridor (1963)
10. Hard Boiled (1992)
11. Sid and Nancy (1986)
12. The 400 Blows (1959)
13. Walkabout (1971)
14. The Killer (1989)
15. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
16. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
17. Dead Ringers (1988)
18. Great Expectations (1946)
19. The Naked Kiss (1964)
20. A Night to Remember (1958)
21. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
22. The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
23. The Long Good Friday (1980)
24. Blood For Dracula (1974)
25. Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
26. Amarcord (1973)
27. Oliver Twist (1948)
28. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
29. Summertime (1955)
30. Alphaville (1965)
Next time: I go up and kick it with Nanook of the North for probably the fifth or sixth time in my life.
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