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| Workhouse orphan Oliver Twist (Mark Lester) does the unimaginable: He asks for more gruel. |
Release Date: Sept. 26, 1968. Running Time: 153 minutes. Screenplay: Vernon Harris. Based on the 1960 musical by: Lionel Bart, based on the novel, Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. Producer: John Woolf. Director: Carol Reed.
THE PLOT:
Oliver Twist (Mark Lester) is a young orphan living in a 19th century workhouse. While working for an undertaker (Leonard Rossiter), he manages to escape. He makes his way to London, hoping to make his fortune. There, he meets "The Artful Dodger" (Jack Wild), a skilled pickpocket his own age who takes him to his benefactor, the wily old Fagin (Ron Moody). Fagin heads a gang of young pickpockets, working in tandem with the brutish Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed).
While out with Oliver, Dodger attempts to pick the pocket of Mr. Brownlow (Jospeh O'Conor), a respectable gentleman. Dodger's attempt goes awry, and Oliver ends up taking the blame. A witness steps forward to clear him, and Brownlow takes him in out of a sense of guilt. But Fagin and Sikes worry that he might yet talk and expose their operation. Sikes becomes fixated on the possibility and becomes determined to bring Oliver back to a life of petty criminal activity - or, failing that, to silence the boy permanently!
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| Criminals Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) and Fagin (Ron Moody) worry that Oliver knows too much. |
CHARACTERS:
Oliver Twist: He shows flashes of personality in the first half hour. He plays along with undertaker Sowerberry's plan to drum up business by using him as a mourner for children's funerals. Later, when the despicable Noah Claypole (Kenneth Cranham) insults his mother, he erupts and attacks the man. Alas, these two moments and his actual escape are about it for him doing anything. As soon as he reaches London, his story becomes a series of events that happen to him. This combines with an unremarkable child performance by Mark Lester to make Oliver himself into the weakest single part of the movie, Oliver!
Fagin: Ron Moody recreates his acclaimed stage performance as Fagin, and he is almost certainly the best thing in the film. He's been significantly toned down from the novel. Dickens's Fagin was unquestionably a villain, a deliberate catalyst for violence even though he didn't directly commit it; Oliver!'s Fagin is a largely harmless rogue. He's appalled by Bill Sikes's brutality, and "No violence, Bill!" practically becomes a catchphrase. As Sikes becomes more threatening, Fagin considers reforming and living an honest life - though it doesn't take long for him to talk himself out of it, in one of the movie's more entertaining musical numbers.
Bill Sikes: With Fagin made harmless and another villainous character removed entirely, all the malice falls to Bill Sikes. This actually works, thanks in no small part to the glowering presence of Oliver Reed. His Sikes is what you'd get if malice was somehow cast into human form. He doesn't so much fall back on intimidation tactics as lean into them as a default. He clearly frightens Fagin and the children, and he keeps his lover, Nancy, doing his bidding with threats of violence. From threats, it's a very short escalation to actual violence, with the end of the movie seeing him literally fleeing from a torch carrying mob that seems more appropriate for him than it ever did for Dr. Frankenstein's unfortunate monster.
Nancy: Shani Wallis's Nancy is the light to Sikes's darkness. She's absolutely in love with him and repeatedly makes clear that she won't betray him. She has no illusions about what kind of man he is, though. She accepts his threats and abuse when they're directed at her. But when Sikes turns on Oliver, she's less willing to go along. She argues against taking the boy away from his comfortable new life with Brownlow, and as Sikes's ill-will toward him grows, she does the unthinkable and acts against him.
Artful Dodger: I already noted how bland I find Mark Lester in the title role. That stands out all the more by comparison with Jack Wild's Dodger. Despite being even younger than Lester, Wild gives a fine child performance. His Dodger is quick-witted and silver-tongued as he talks Oliver into following him back to Fagin's hideout. When Oliver becomes the target of pursuit, Dodger tries to misdirect the police, steering them away from the boy. He's often paired with Fagin, memorably at the end of the film, and there's a sense that Dodger is probably very much like Fagin was himself as a boy... which has a sobering effect on the comedy, as Dodger is probably headed toward much the same life as his mentor.
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| Oliver meets the Artful Dodger (Jack Wild). One of these child performances is significantly better than the other. |
A GAPING HOLE WHERE THE MAIN CHARACTER SHOULD BE:
This was my first time watching Oliver!, and I doubt it's a movie I'll revisit. I enjoyed it well enough, and I'll heap plenty of praise on aspects of it below. But I had one big problem, and that was with Oliver himself.
As I indicated in the "Characters" section, Oliver only actually does anything in the first half hour. His escape from Sowberry and the workhouse is his high point as a character. After that, he becomes ridiculously passive. Dodger takes him to Fagin. Dodger steals the wallet that he is blamed for. Mr. Brownlow takes him in to show him a better life. Fagin and Sikes plot to take him back. Nancy tries to rescue him. Oliver barely even reacts to most of this, to the point where it wouldn't make much difference if he was replaced with a sack of potatoes that was passed from one character to the next.
In fairness, Oliver was also quite passive in Charles Dickens' source novel, Oliver Twist. But the musical takes an existing problem and makes it worse. By eliminating some supporting characters who were directly linked to Oliver, and by toning down Fagin's villainy so that he no longer poses a direct threat, the title character is left with no meaningful interaction with anyone. This reduces him to a plot device, which greatly limits my engagement.
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| Musical number, Consider Yourself, turns into a tour of working-class London. |
CHARISMATIC PERFORMANCES AND A FANTASTIC PRODUCTION:
Despite the weakness of Oliver himself, I mostly enjoyed the movie thanks to its many other merits. Ron Moody's charismatically sleazy Fagin just about fills the gaping hole where a main character should be. The movie sparks to life every time he takes centerstage - and in the middle of the film, that happens a lot, almost always with entertaining results. Too bad, then, that he mostly recedes to the background for the final Act, with Sikes and Nancy taking most of the focus as the tone turns darker.
The production itself is fantastic. Director Carol Reed spent weeks on the big production numbers, and the effort pays off. Consider Yourself, when Oliver meets Dodger, is a musical tour of working-class London. Dodger escorts him to Fagin's hideout through merchants, newspaper sellers, and various others. Each person they pass joins the song, with the performance growing to encompass the entire street.
Its mirror image comes after the Intermission, as Oliver looks out onto the upper-class street of Brownlow's estate to see a flower girl, a strawberry vendor, and milk maids selling their wares to the rich. Again, the number, Who Will Buy?, grows to fill the area, one which belongs to a completely different world than Fagin - and yet is also uncomfortably close geographically, as shown at the end by the camera closing on Bill Sikes, watching for his prey.
The script moves some of the stage version's songs around to good effect. In the stage musical, the boisterous Oom-Pah-Pah is Nancy's first song, introducing the tavern where she plies her trade. The film changes her introductory song to It's a Fine Life, which puts more focus on her character and her acceptance of a less-than-ideal existence. Oom-Pah-Pah is moved to her final song, with her deliberately rousing the people in the tavern to create a distraction for Oliver's escape. This adds a level of tension, folding the song into a part of the story.
Still, it's hard to fully get past the best moments being ones in which Oliver himself is on the periphery. The film dies whenever the focus returns to him. Little wonder, then, that the further along the story goes, the less the title character seems to be at the center of the action.
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| Sikes threatens Nancy (Shani Wallis). |
REMAKES AND RETELLINGS:
As with almost any Dickens story, there are many film and television versions of Oliver Twist. The earliest is dated 1909, and variations of the story continue to be presented regularly. Some of the more notable adaptations include:
Oliver Twist (1922). Director Frank Lloyd, who would later helm Mutiny on the Bounty, directs this silent version starring Jackie Coogan as Oliver and Lon Chaney as Fagin. I haven't seen it, but contemporary reception was almost universally positive, with Chaney's caricatured Fagin influencing most later portrayals. Like too many silent films, it was lost for decades, until a print was found in 1973.
Oliver Twist (1948). Probably the most well-known non-musical version of Dickens' novel, this generally faithful adaptation was directed by David Lean. Alec Guinness's Fagin stirred controversy for playing up Jewish stereotypes, but his performance also was an obvious influence on Ron Moody's characterization (though Moody and director Carol Reed de-emphasized the stereotypical elements). As with most of Lean's works, the film is generally well regarded today.
Oliver & Company (1988). The Disney version makes Oliver a kitten who joins a pack of dogs to survive on the streets of 1980s New York. Dom DeLuise's Fagin is even less villainous than the 1968 movie's, with him coming across as well-meaning and likable. It performed well at the box office, and in retrospect its success was a sign that Disney's animation division was about to turn things around after lackluster output over the previous decade.
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| Oliver arrives in London. |
OVERALL:
Oliver! is a fine production boasting strong performances by Ron Moody, Oliver Reed, and Shani Wallis. It also has an excellent child performance in Jack Wild's Artful Dodger, who makes a fun double act with Moody's Fagin.
Unfortunately, Oliver himself is a bland, personality-free void, and I found my interest waning any time he took center stage. The movie itself doesn't seem interested in him as a character, taking any excuse to focus on Fagin or Sikes or Nancy, to the point that the title character barely even speaks across the second half of the movie! In the end, I can't escape the sense that this movie has a big hole where its young hero should be.
I still liked it more than not - but I can't rate it as one of the better Best Picture winners. Given that The Lion in Winter and 2001: A Space Odyssey were released the same year, I think the Academy got this one wrong.
Rating: 6/10.
Best Picture - 1967: In the Heat of the Night
Best Picture - 1969: Midnight Cowboy (not yet reviewed)
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