Oscar Profile #60: Charles Dickens

For my sixtieth profile I thought I’d do something a little different and take a look at the cinema history of an author whose books were adapted for the screen long after his passing. Who better, as we approach the holiday season than to recall the works of Charles Dickens whose bi-centennial we celebrate early next year?

Born February 7, 1812 in Portsea, England, Charles Dickens was the second eldest of eight children whose father was sent to debtors’ prison when Dickens was 12. As a consequence, he was forced to quit school and work ten hours a day at a boot-blacking factory. The experience helped lay the groundwork for some of his later novels. Although his paternal grandmother soon died and left his father enough money to pay his debts and leave prison, his mother did not immediately remove young Dickens from his factory job. This experience was said to sour him on women of whom he remained distrustful for the remainder of his life. He famously left his wife at the peak of his acclaim in 1858 after twenty-two years of marriage and ten children.

Among his major works were The Pickwick Papers (serialized 1836-1837); Oliver TwistNicholas Nickleby (serialized 1838-1839); A Christmas Carol (published 1843); David Copperfield (serialized 1849-1850); Bleak House (serialized 1852-1853); Little Dorrit (serialized 1855-1857); A Tale of Two Cities (serialized 1859); Great Expectations (serialized 1860-1861) and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (serialized April-September, 1870), Dickens having written only six of the intended twelve chapters prior to his death from a cerebral hemorrhage in June, 1870. He was 58.

To date there have been more than three hundred films and TV shows taken from his works. The earliest was The Death of Nancy Sykes taken from Oliver Twist in 1897.

Although both the 1933 version of Oliver Twist and the 1934 version of Great Expectations have their fans, the first really successful big screen adaptation of Dickens was George Cukor’s impeccable 1935 all-star cast version of David Copperfield, which was quickly followed by Jack Conway’s equally satisfying film of A Tale of Two Cities and three years later by Edwin L. Marin’s delightful version of A Christmas Carol with Reginald Owen substituting for an increasingly immobile Lionel Barrymore, radio’s definitive Scrooge.

The post-World War II years saw a spurt of great Dickens adaptations from his native England commencing with David Lean’s absorbing production of Great Expectations and followed by his immensely entertaining film ofOlivier Twist and Brian Desmond Hurst’s superlative film of Scrooge, better known by its original name of A Christmas Carol in the U.S.
The screen took a renewed interest in Dickens with Carol Reed’s sumptuous version of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! in 1968. The film scored an imposing eleven Oscar nominations and five wins including Best Picture and Director.

The following year Delbert Mann directed a well-received new version of David Copperfield, released theatrically in the U.K., but shown on U.S. TV in two parts in 1970. That same year Ronald Neame directed a memorable musical version of Scrooge with a fine score by Leslie Bricusse.

The 1988 film version of Little Dorrit was released in two parts and scored two Oscar nominations including one for Alec Guinness in a role patterned after Dickens’ own father.

There were two more TV adaptations of David Copperfield in 1999 and 2000. Daniel Radcliffe made his first impression as Young David in the former, which also starred Maggie Smith, Bob Hoskins, Ian McKellen and Harry Lloyd, Dickens’ great-great-grandson as Young Steerforth. Hugh Dancy starred as David as a man in the latter version opposite a miscast Sally Field and Michael Richards.

Acclaimed TV mini-series of Bleak House and Little Dorrit have appeared in recent years. Both a TV mini-series and an all-star big screen adaptation of Great Expectations are filming. There is also a rumor that Daniel Day-Lewis will play Dickens in a new screen biography. And bringing Dickens on screen full circle there is a new version of Oliver Twist called Twist in pre-production.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

DAVID COPPERFIELD (1935), directed by George Cukor

With each role perfectly cast with actors in roles they seemed born to play, Cukor’s masterful direction manages to encompass almost all of Dickens’ own favorite work. Freddie Bartholomew as Young David; Frank Lawton as David as a man; W.C. Fields as Micawber; Edna May Oliver as Aunt Betsey; Lennox Pawle as Mr. Dick; Basil Rathbone as Murdstone; Roland Young as Uriah Heep; Lewis Stone as Mr. Wickfield; Made Evans as Agnes; Maureen O’Sullivan as Dora; Jessie Ralph as Peggotty and Lionel Barrymore as her brother Dan are just some of them. It’s the Hollywood studio system at its finest.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1935), directed by Jack Conway

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” begins Dickens’ tale of love and sacrifice amidst the bloody French revolution. Ronald Colman as Sydney Carton; Elizabeth Allan as Lucie Manette; Edna May Oliver as Miss Pross; Basil Rathbone as the Marquis St. Evremonde; Donald Woods as Charles Darnay, Blanche Yurka as the evil Madame De Farge; Lucille Laverne as The Vengeance and Isabel Jewell as the condemned seamstress bring Dickens’ tale brilliantly to life.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1946), directed by David Lean

Oscar winning art direction and cinematography are the hallmark of Lean’s atmospheric account of Young Pip, Estella and Pip’s secret benefactor who was not the person he thought it was. Anthony Wager and Jean Simmons as Young Pip and Estella; John Mills and Valerie Hobson as the protagonists as adults; Martita Hunt as the reclusive Miss Havisham; Finlay Currie as the convict Magwitch; Bernard Miles as Joe Gargery and Alec Guinness as Herbert Pocket are all splendid. Francis L. Sullivan, who played Jaggers in the 1934 version, also plays the character in this one.

OLIVER TWIST (1948) , directed by David Lean

Alec Guinness’ portrayal of Fagin was one of his career highlights and Lean’s version of Dickens’ tale of the orphan and the thieves is probably the most faithful to the source material. There are also strong performances by Robert Newton as Bill Sikes; Kay Walsh as Nancy; John Howard Davies as Olivier; Anthony Newley as the Artful Dodger; Francis L. Sullivan as Mr. Bumble and Henry Stephenson as Mr. Brownloe. Since eclipsed by the 1968 Oscar winning musical version, this one still deserves to be seen.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1951) , directed by Brian Desmond Hurst

This is the version of the perennial holiday classic that most people remember with great affection. Alastair Sim’s portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge is sheer perfection and he is aided and abetted by Kathleen Harrison as the housekeeper; Mervyn Johns as Bob Cratchit; Hermione Baddlely as Mrs. Cratchit; George Cole as young Ebenezer; Michael Hordern as Marley’s Ghost and more. The film was released to just one theatre in New York in 1951 and not seen anywhere else in the U.S. until it became a perennial TV favorite later in the decade. It is one of four versions that is shown over and over during the holiday season – the others are the 1938 version with Reginald Owen; the 1970 musical version with Albert Finney (the only actor to play Scrooge both as a young and old man) and the 1984 TV version with George C. Scott