A Film Canon

As with Great Expectations, Lean's freedom from Dickens' episodic, serialistic imperative allows him to simplify, and further beautify, Oliver Twist's narrative and structural ingenuity - in this case, with the aid of a series of eloquent montage sequences and summative images, which not only refrain from Dickens' wordiness, but often occur exactly when that wordiness might be expected to be foregrounded, as evinced in the astonishing treatment of Oliver's (John Howard Davis) request to the Beadle (Francis L. Sullivan) which, in comparison to other film versions, is effectively elided. This is particularly evident in the first act, where it is reinforced by cinematographer Guy Green's commitment to a palpable, tactile blackness - a mere concentration of grit - that encompasses the poorhouse, orphanage, funeral parlour, cupboard in which Oliver sleeps and, finally, the coffins populating his prison. That said, this darkness remains sufficiently foregrounded to ensure that the subsequent, atmospheric elaborations of Victorian London - usually in the forms of chases and walks - don't mitigate the peculiar claustrophobia of the narrative, nor the comparable darkness that gradually builds around Bill Sikes (Robert Newton), who puts in the most charismatic performance, if only because Fagin's (Alec Guinness) hyperbolic Jewish features tend to impede his facial expressions, and Nancy (Kay Walsh) is reduced to a one-dimensional martyr to an even greater extent than in the novel, culminating with the various secular and sacred church windows that euphemise her death. The result is a peculiarly sombre adaptation, whose proto-musical qualities are thereby rendered all the more striking, to the extent that song feels appropriate to, or absent from, virtually every scene. This may reflect the heightened melodrama of Dickens' early career, but seems more attributable to the pervasive chorus of young boys, as Fagin recognises in his explanation of pickpocketing by means of a dance that anticipates 'Pick A Pocket Or Two'.