Nicholas Nickleby (1980)

  I recieved the entire set of Nicholas Nickleby the Christmas before last. It was on old VHS tapes, not DVDS. It's been ages since I've actually read the novel. It has been even longer than that since I've seen some of this adaptation, possibly the most celebrated one ever of Dickens' third novel. It was put on by the Royal Shakespeare company back in the eighties.

    I remember when this was telvised in 1982, on ABC, I think. I was in ninth grade at the time. My English teacher had us read Great Expections that year, the first time I'd had to read a lengthy Dickens novel. I remember her assigning extra credit to anyone who would watch the Nicholas Nickleby serial and do a special report on it. I saw just a bit of it, and it seemed very dark, but that's the way Dickens' adaptations often are. What I most remember though, is my mom absolutely hating it, due mostly to the darkness, and some of the violence going on. However, we didn't really see enough to make any judgement of the series as whole, especially considering it's length.


     Now that I've finally watched it from beginning to end (and knowing the story), I can safely say that it lives up to all the hype it recieved back then. While some Dickens adaptations of the time cut corners and leave out imprtant characters and events, that is certainly not the case. It's all here--Nicholas's confronation with the sadistic Wackford Squeers, the Cheeryble Brothers, the Vile Mulberry Hawk, Smike's tragic death, the horrible realization that prompts Ralph Nickleby's suicide, everything. The scene in which Nicholas thrashes Squeers is memorable, and appears especially orchastrated here to have the audience cheering.
 

    The approach this adaptation employs here is a bit unorthodox, or at least it seems so for as a film adaptation. Before each subsequent act, the performers give monologues to the audience in regard to the events. Thus, we get the sensation of the people on stage transforming from actor to character, and back again. As a film, this can be a bit disconcerting, but the adaptation does manage to work both as a film and a play. This is literally a film of the play (caught live on camera it spooled out on the London stage).  And though the sets change throughout the performance, they are convincing enough to work on film, as though shot in the gloom-shrouded steeets of Victorian London--well, nearly. The atmosphere in this production is indeed quite dark, as it should be, and we don't see too much that would reveal itself as stagey during the actual scenes.

 

    On a final note, actor Roger Rees, who has the title role, also played Scrooge's nephew Fred 1984's A Christmas Carol. He's who I always pictured as Nicholas, thanks to this performance--in spite of the fact that I'd not the seen but very little of the performance before now.