Oliver Twist

1948 version of the Charles Dickens book

Rating: 17/20

Plot: The titular orphan drifts from home to home to no-home, befriending pickpockets and wealthy guys and trying his best to control his uncouth ears.

Bonus points for Alec Guinness's ridiculous nose. It gave me an idea for a full-length animated movie that I might have to pitch to the Pixar people. Dig it: the tale of the prosthetic schnoz as it drifts from film role to film role, struggles with being used to perpetuate a heinous stereotype, finds itself homeless and forgotten in the darkest parts of London, and eventually makes its comeback in some profound and unexpected way. It'll be an Oliver Twistian story or at least the kind of shit that Dickens would have written if Dickens would have written about prosthetic noses. Guinness sounds ridiculous, too, but I like what he does with his eyes behind the layers of make-up and fake body parts. I liked other performances, too--Robert Newton as the despicable Bill Sykes, portly Francis L. Sullivan as the portly Mr. Bumble. The kid, John Howard Davies, is pretty good as well although that's mostly because he stays quiet most of the time. I love this most when the dialogue's sparse to nonexistent. Following the Cineguild gong, the sexiest of logo screens, there's not much dialogue in the early going, just gorgeous and moody storm imagery. Oliver Twist cries lustily, and there are scenes with straw drawing, symbolic hooks, orphans watching people gorging, swinging switches. It's calculated moodiness, and Lean's got such an eye for showing his characters at unexpected angles and with unexpected items in the foreground. And all that imagery somehow makes something like "Please, sir, I want some more" more poignant. The sets are really cool, and there's something claustrophobic about a lot of it, like the oily black and white backgrounds are threatening to swallow up the characters at any time. They perfectly fit with a story that is 95% gloomy downer.