Oliver Twist
CRITIQUE | THE TEXT | AT THE MOVIES
1922, 1933, 1948, 1968, 2005, 2007
First serial publicationAlso called
The Adventures of Oliver Twist and Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress
First publication
1837–1839 in Bentley's Miscellany
Publication in book form
1838
Literature form
Novel
Genres
Literary
Writing language
English
Author's country
England
Length
Approx. 166,000 words
Nancy (Shani Wallace), Fagin (Ron Moody) and Sykes (Oliver Reed) consult in 1968's musical Oliver!
Musical Oliver
Oliver! (1968): Director Carol Reed; writers Lionel Bart, Vernon Harris; featuring Ron Moody, Oliver Reed, Mark Lester, Shani Wallis
It was inevitable a musical version of Dickens's second-most popular story would eventually be created.
And 1968's Oliver!, based on a lauded Broadway production, was considered a great success, winning a slew of Academy Awards and launching several songs that people are still humming decades later ("Consider Yourself", "Who Will Buy This Wonderful Morning", "You Gotta Pick a Pocket or Two", "Where Is Love"). And the film is still a favourite, to judge by movie site comments.
But it ain't Dickens. Way too cheerful for one thing. Dickens did include plenty of comedy and playful touches in even his most serious dramas. But Oliver! (that exclamation point gives it away before the movie even begins) is almost unrelenting in its cheeriness—all that singing and dancing that sometimes seems to go on forever.
At least three times the plot comes to a dead stop to accommodate production numbers taking over what seems to be the entire city. Once, just when it seems impossible it could get any bigger, an entire parade is brought in.
And it's so squeaky clean. The slums of London are picturesquely slummy. The urchins, starting with Oliver and the Artful Dodger, are cute as heck and strategically scuffed. Nancy looks like a Beatle girlfriend circa 1966, with gleaming blond hair and pretty frocks.
Even the thug Bill Sikes, played with due malevolence by Oliver Reed, is magnetically thuggish. He provides the darkest moments of the film, hitting the lowest point with a disturbing murder.
And Fagin. Ron Moody won accolades for reprising his stage role in the film as the lovable scoundrel.... What, you didn't know from the book that Fagin was such a sweetheart? Sure, he's mercenary but, underneath that, heart of gold all the way. Which requires a major rewrite of Dickens's pathetic end for the old gent. Oliver! closes with him and the Dodger literally singin' and dancin' off into the sunset to a bright future life of petty crime.
Mark Lester as Oliver.
With the supposedly bad guys getting all the attention, Mark Lester as Oliver is lost in the soft-shoe shuffle. However, he gamely pulls off the role of the vulnerable innocent, without whom none of the surrounding hoopla would make any sense. And he seems to have a sweet singing voice—though it was revealed decades later that his singing was dubbed by a young woman.
Ah, well, he is cute.
As might be predicted, Oliver's sad back story is given short shrift, Monks is dropped from the plot altogether, Mr. Brownlow's household is reduced substantially, and the boy's revealed heritage is simplified.
So, is Oliver! worth seeing?
Not for Dickens, not for Oliver Twist. But maybe for a British version of a big-budget, Hollywood-style musical—considered by many critics to be one of the best film musicals ever made. (Not me, obviously.)
— Eric
