Oliver Twist (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charles Dickens [240]
Oliver is played by an especially innocent Mark Lester. Ron Moody, as a crusty Fagin, and Jack Wild, as the Artful Dodger, earned Oscars for their performances. Oliver Reed, Carol’s nephew, menacingly portrays Bill Sikes.
The success of Carol Reed’s Oliver! was so overwhelming that its recognition eclipsed that of the original musical. Nominated for eleven Academy Awards, the film took home six, including Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Score.
Recent Film and TV Versions
After the success of the Lean and Reed films, Disney perceived audiences as asking for some more and released a cartoon musical Oliver & Company (1988) that features the popular musical and vocal talents of Billy Joel, Huey Lewis, and Bette Midler. There have been several television adaptations. Clive Donner directed a British version in 1982, with George C. Scott as Fagin and Tim Curry as Bill Sikes. A British miniseries appeared in 1985. Tony Bill’s version of 1997, also produced by Disney, has Richard Dreyfuss as Fagin and Elijah Wood playing the Artful Dodger. The BBC offered another miniseries version in 1999.
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.
Comments
JOHN FORSTER
The story of Oliver Twist, so far as it has yet proceeded, is its author’s masterpiece, and mean as the subject appears to be—the account of the Progress of a Parish Boy—promises to take its place among the higher prose fictions of the language.
—from an unsigned article in the Examiner (September 10, 1837)
THE SPECTATOR
That [Charles Dickens] exhibits genius in embodying London character, and very remarkable skill in making use of peculiarities of expression, even to the current phrase of the day, is undoubtedly true; but he has higher merits, and other elements of success. His powers of pathos, sadly touching rather than tearful, are great; he has a hearty sympathy with humanity, however degraded by vice or disguised by circumstances, and a quick perception to detect the existence of the good, however overlaid; his truth and nature in dialogue are conspicuous to all; he has the great art of bringing the actors and incidents before the reader by a few effective strokes; though deficient in narrative, his description is sometimes nicely true, and often powerful; and his command of language considerable, without his style ever appearing forced. In addition to these qualities, he has a manly self-reliance—above all pretence, and all conventional servilities of classes and coteries; nor does he ever, with a sickly vanity, obtrude himself upon the reader’s attention. Above all, he has genius to vivify his observation.
—November 24, 1838
RICHARD FORD
[Oliver Twist] deals with the outcasts of humanity, who do their dirty work in work, pot, and watch houses, to finish on the Newgate drop. Alas! for the Horatian precept, ‘Virginibus puerisque canto.’ The happy ignorance of innocence is disregarded. Our youth should not even suspect the possibility of such hidden depths of guilt, for their tender memories are wax to receive and marble to retain. These infamies feed the innate evil principle, which luxuriates in the supernatural and horrid, the dread and delight of our childhood, which is never shaken off, for no man entirely outlives the nursery. We object to the familiarising our