Over the last few weeks, we’ve discussed how films like Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate ushered in the age of “New Hollywood.” New Hollywood moved away from musicals, period pieces, and the studio system and towards young directors tackling mature subject matter. But not every film was adultery and bloodshed: sometimes there was Oliver!, a musical based on the 1838 Charles Dickens novel “Oliver Twist.”
That’s the novel with the line “please sir, I want some more,” and the movie knows how to play the hits: Oliver (Mark Lester) asks for more like five minutes in.
Mr. Bumble (Harry Secombe), the beadle1 of Oliver’s orphanage, responds to Oliver’s request by selling him to an undertaker. Oliver escapes that situation and walks to London, where he meets Jack Dawkins (Jack Wild), also known as the Artful Dodger. Dodger takes Oliver to the hideout of Fagin (Ron Moody), a villain who trains young boys in the art of crime.
During a crime spree, Oliver is blamed for a pocket-picking done by Dodger. Mr. Brownlow (Joseph O’Conor) has Oliver arrested, but when it’s discovered that Oliver’s innocent, Mr. Brownlow adopts the boy, thinking he looks a bit like his niece Emily.
Post-intermission, Oliver becomes a MacGuffin. Because Oliver has seen the inside of Fagin’s criminal enterprise, Fagin’s frightening associate Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) abducts Oliver. Bill’s paramour, the prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold Nancy (Shani Wallis), finks to Mr. Brownlow about what’s happened, then gets murdered by Bill.
At the end, a posse descends on Fagin’s lair. Bill Sikes is shot and killed trying to escape. Oliver is reunited with Mr. Brownlow, who has discovered that Oliver is actually his grand-nephew. Unlike in the book, Fagin and Dodger escape2; Fagin considers turning over a new leaf but eventually decides “once a villain you’re a villain to the end.”
Rating: 5/10, still better than reading Dickens.3
Cast and Crew
Carol Reed snagged a Best Director Oscar for Oliver!, but he had already secured his directorial legacy for his trio of noirs in the late ‘40s: Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and The Third Man (1949). Those latter two films were written by novelist Graham Greene, and Reed later adapted Greene’s novel “Our Man in Havana” to the screen (good book, good movie).4 Carol Reed’s nephew was Oliver Reed, who played Bill Sikes in Oliver!
Quick Hits:
Child actor Mark Lester, who played Oliver, retired from acting before his twentieth birthday. He’s the godfather of Michael Jackson’s children, and there’s some suspicion he’s their biological father.
Ron Moody originated the role of Fagin in the West End5 and was the gent up for the Best Actor Oscar in this film.
Jack Wild received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod for his role as Dodger. He was later the lead on the children’s television show “H. R. Pufnstuf” (1969).
Lionel Bart created the musical “Oliver!”, winning a Tony for the score.6
The Trivia
Hey, it’s another entry in our ongoing series “works by authors you should know.” We’ve done Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck, and today it’s Charles Dickens. Consider this an abridged version of this NAQT You Gotta Know.
Charles Dickens, or Charlie D as his friends called him, was known for the serialized novels he wrote during the 1800s. He experienced poverty during childhood, which led to his lifelong advocacy for (and boring novels about) children’s welfare and labor rights. He wrote under the pseudonym “Boz” and collaborated with illustrator Hablot Browne, who went by “Phiz.”
Dickens’ first novel was “The Pickwick Papers” (gotta know it was first) and his second was “Oliver Twist,” whose plot we discussed above.
There are a handful of Dickens’ doorstop titles about which you should know some details. One of those is “Nicholas Nickleby,” which, like “Oliver Twist,” is about a title orphan. Nicky’s crappy uncle Ralph sends him to Dotheboys Hall, where he spars with the Bumble-esque Wackford Squeers. LearnedLeague had a double dactyl7 one-day from MarcusML that described the novel thusly:
Beeryble-Cheeryble,
Nicholas Nickleby
Working for pennies at
Dotheboys, then
Journeyed to London for
Fortune and marriage; a
Capitalistically
Suitable end.
Other characters in “NN” include the brothers Cheeryble, who are Nick’s employers in London, and the half-wit Smike.
Next one: “The Old Curiosity Shop.” This is the one with “Little” Nell Trent. Nell’s grandfather loses the title shop to moneylender Daniel Quilp and then everybody dies. This one was basically “Harry Potter” in terms of popularity, with American readers storming a ship containing the final chapter.
How about a three-pack of lesser-known works (take this paragraph as a breather): the historical novel “Barnaby Rudge”; “Martin Chuzzlewit,” which is partially set in the U.S.; and “Dombey and Son,” about the title shipping firm.
Ready to dive back into details? Okay, let’s do “David Copperfield”: it’s Dickens’ most autobiographical8, and oh my god, it’s another child dealing with the cruel adult world. When David’s father dies, his evil stepfather Mr. Murdstone sends him to Salem House, where he’s tortured by also-evil headmaster Mr. Creakle. Below is a cheat sheet to help keep straight which mean dudes abuse which poor Dickens title characters.
There are lots of characters you should know from this one too:
Mr. Micawber, the poor but ever-optimistic dweeb modeled on Dickens’ father. He always thinks “something will turn up” and was played by W.C. Fields in a 1935 film adaptation.9
Betsey Trotwood, David’s great-aunt who gets David an education under the lawyer Mr. Wickfield.
Uriah Heep, the faux-humble law clerk embezzling from Mr. Wickfield.
David eventually marries Dora Spenlow, who dies, and then marries Agnes, daughter of Mr. Wickfield. Then, since it’s somewhat autobiographical, David becomes a magician an author.
Another three-pack of names to be aware of: “Bleak House” (about a suit over the title house within the Jarndyce family10) “Hard Times,” and “Little Dorrit.”
You still with me? Two big ones left. One is “A Tale of Two Cities,” which starts with the line “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, yadda yadda yadda, this book is long.” I’m 100% serious about this: if you want to nail this one down, I’d just bang through this “Wishbone” episode. But in three sentences: Charles Darnay flees France during the French Revolution as Madame Defarge seeks retribution against aristocrats. Charles marries Lucie Manette in England but returns to France and lands in prison. His lookalike, Sydney Carton, who’s in love with Lucie, frees Charles by switching places with him and getting executed, saying “it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
Last one with important details: “Great Expectations.” It’s about an orphan named Pip (did this guy just write the same novel over and over) who falls in love with Estella. Unfortunately, Estella was raised by the bitter Miss Havisham, who’s always hanging around in her wedding dress, and Estella ends up breaking Pip’s heart because that’s what she’s been trained to do.
Dickens’ last two novels were “Our Mutual Friend” and “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (his last; he didn’t finish it). That’s fifteen novels to know. But won’t it be cool if you’re able to say, y’know, “Barnaby Rudge” or “Wackford Squeers” or whatever when the time is right?
Speed Round: Dickens Christmas Novellas
In addition to the novels above, Dickens wrote five Christmas novellas. The first (and best known) is “A Christmas Carol,” but there’s also:
The Chimes
Cricket on the Hearth
The Battle of Life
The Haunted Man
Odds and Ends
Hugh Griffith, who we saw in Ben-Hur, shows up here as a drunken magistrate…when Bill Sikes warns Fagin that “our collars get felt,” he’s using a Britishism for getting arrested…Davy Jones, later a member of the Monkees, played the Artful Dodger on Broadway…BRITISH FOODS: pease pudding is a mash of boiled split peas; saveloys are pork sausages…the subtitle of “Oliver Twist” is “Or, the Parish Boy’s Progress”; it was published serially in Bentley’s Miscellany and written after the passage of the Poor Law of 1834…the movie skips out on the book’s subplot about Mr. Monks, Oliver’s half-brother who plots against him…after Oliver!, the next musical to win Best Picture was 2002’s Chicago…according to Wikipedia, neither the ‘90s rock band Mr. Bungle nor the Los Angeles Dodgers were named after characters from “Oliver Twist.”
“Beadle” is just a word for a minor official. You’ll mostly only hear it in relation to Mr. Bumble.
In the book, Fagin is far more villainous and is hanged at the end. Dodger, meanwhile, is sent to prison overseas.
This movie is well-regarded today, but I found it interminable. The songs consistently grind the action to a halt, the child performances are poor, and the plot is insipid. Worse, none of the characters have character arcs, making the two-and-a-half hour movie feel pointless.
Carol Reed also directed the Burt Lancaster movie Trapeze (1956), and although I haven’t seen Trapeze, I once spent an evening drinking Fernet and insisting to two of my friends that, to even begin to appreciate the art of film, they just had to watch Trapeze. That certainly might be true.
Moody didn’t originally play the role of Fagin on Broadway—he was replaced by Clive Revill, who was nominated for a Tony. Moody did play Fagin in a ‘80s Broadway revival of “Oliver!”, and for that he was nominated for a Tony.
Bart seems to be a much bigger deal in Britain: he won a bunch of Ivor Novello awards and composed a bunch of other musicals that most Americans (or, at least, this American) haven’t heard of.
It’s written in the first person and parts came from an actual autobiography that Dickens had scrapped.
I’d definitely recommend this film if you want to even begin to appreciate the art of film.
“Bleak House” is narrated by Esther Summerson, Dickens’ only female narrator (note that Little Nell and Little Dorrit are not the narrators of their respective works).
Ronald Colman was SO GOOD at Sydney Carton in the '30s version of A Tale of Two Cities (which, incidentally, is one of Dickens' shortest books; see https://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2011/12/a-dickens-of-a-list.html ).