Oliver Twist (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charles Dickens [239]
22 (p. 408) struck her down: Dickens’s dramatic rendering of this scene became the most celebrated of his public readings, and one in which the author clearly took a ghoulish glee. His son and some of his friends believed that the emotional intensity of Dickens’s frequent performances of “ikes and Nancy” contributed to his early death.
23 (p. 409) such flesh, and so much blood!: This passage recalls Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (act 5, scene 1): “ut, damned spot! Out, I say! ... Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”
24 (p. 409) the stone in honour of Whittington: Richard (Dick) Whittington (1358-1423) was a merchant and famous Lord Mayor of London. Whittington came to London as a young boy, determined to seek his fortune. When he discovered that the streets of the capital were not, in fact, paved with gold, young Dick decided to go home. The monument on Highgate Hill marks the spot where, according to the rags-to-riches legend, the boy heard a chorus of London church bells calling him to return and prophesying his bright future: “urn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London.”
25 (p. 457) Those dreadful walls of Newgate: Dickens was familiar with Newgate, including the condemned cell, having visited the prison in November 1835. He recorded his impressions in “ Visit to Newgate,” published in Sketches by Boz (1836).
INSPIRED BY OLIVER TWIST
Orphan Oliver Twist, it seems, finds no difficulty in being welcomed into the movie theater. In the early twentieth century, the American film industry produced a string of silent cinematic versions. The first was A Modern Oliver Twist (1906); others, all titled Oliver Twist, were released in 1909, 1912, 1916, and 1922. Oliver Twist, Jr. came out in 1921, and Germany released a version in 1920. In 1933 Oliver entered the sound era, though with little initial success.
David Lean’s Oliver Twist
The first truly acclaimed film was director David Lean’s gloomy 1948 adaptation. Lean, who had directed Dickens’s Great Expectations (1946) and who would direct the epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962), depicts a damp and dingy London in all its gruesome vitality; amid thunder and rain, the film opens with a woman on the verge of labor, staggering toward shelter. Oliver is played by the eight-year-old and decidedly waifish John Howard Davies, who embodies the pathos and vulnerability of the street urchin to perfection. (Davies would go on to produce early episodes of the BBC’s classic TV comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus.) Twenty-two-year-old Alec Guinness plays the master pickpocket Fagin. Shot in a nightmarish style that enhances Dickens’s bleak story, the film was perhaps too dark and realistic for its time, and Lean’s Oliver Twist was not immediately recognized by critics. Later, however, it attained cult classic status and now is widely considered to be among the greatest British films.
Lionel Bart’s and Sir Carol Reed’s Oliver!
Many children first encounter Dickens’s famous orphan through the musical Oliver!, by British composer Lionel Bart, and its film version, by Carol Reed. Oliver! premiered in London in 1960 and opened on Broadway in 1963, running to 774 performances in New York. Bart, who wrote the book, lyrics, and music, freely adapted Dickens’s novel and did away with much of the despair. The result made him famous. The catchy score includes such tunes as “Where Is Love?,” “Consider Yourself,” and “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two.” In 1963 Oliver! was nominated for Musical of the Year, and Bart won a Tony for his score.
Five years later, director Carol Reed (The Third Man) adapted the musical for film. Following Bart’s lead, Reed focused on the light-hearted aspects of the story, and the energy level remains remarkably high throughout the film. It opens, like the musical, in the dark and dreary workhouse, where Oliver and his orphan retinue sing a rousing “Food, Glorious Food”