Great Expectations (1980)

 

By the ninth grade junior high, I was now becoming fairly well versed in Dickens, or at least knowledgable about his works. This was mostly thanks to the TV adaptations of the time. Those were ones I grew up with and remain favorites of today. There was A Tale of Two Cities in 1981,followed by Oliver Twist, in 1982 both sponsored by the CBS reading program. Then in Ninth grade, our English teacher had us read the entireity of Dickens' Great Expectations. Already primed to Dickens by Oliver, I embraced this new tale of another poor orphan horribly treated by his disturbed sister and her pompous friends, even at Christmas (which was not so Jolly in this Dickens yarn). The story opens with the orphan being horribly and graphically threatened an escaped convict. I think I got somehow that this convict really wasn't a villain, in spite of his manner and appearance. And that there really was no psychotic child-murderer hiding out with him. One thing I definitely saw coming was it was Magwitch who had been Pip's unseen benefactor all along. However, rather embarrassingly, I didn't get until after the fact that Pip had been as sure as anything that Miss Havishham was his true benefactor, and was doing so with the prospect his marrying Estella. I thought of it as another story of a poor boy making it rich, and I didn't really get the downside of the story, nor Dickens strong critique of class snobbery, which he himself was guilty of in his younger days. Later of course, I came to appreciate all of this, starting when a college professor stated the irony that Great Expectations was the one Dickens novel where there were no true great expectations.

    It was around the same time that I read the book for class (ninth grade), that I came upon this edition of the novel in a Waldons or B. Dalton Bookseller. The actors from the BBC production, which had aired a couple years earlier, looked exactly as I'd pictured them. Especially Pip with his British cap. I didn't get to see this version until years later, though I did see BBC adaptations of A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield.  I managed to order a copy from a video store and (Oh! this is embarassing!) I thought it was the wrong movie because on the cover, Pip wasn't wearing his cap, and I had it sent back! I later discovered my error, and either reordered it, or found it at Suncoast, which at time carried classic British productions. 

   Like every other BBC Dickens adaptation of the time, it is very meticulous, almost going too far in the other direction from adaptations that whittled Dickens thick novels down to two hours. Unlike some more recent adaptations, it is indeed very faithful to the tale. At least one recent version got rid of Orlick, a major antagonist, and the source of Pip's sister's madness. Worse, some other adaptations have gotten rid of Compeyson, which leaves a major part of the story unexplained, since Compeyson is basically the root source of all the trouble in the story. My one beef with the 1981 version, is that even though Compeyson still has a major role, it's never established that he's the same one who deserted Miss Havishham on her wedding night. 

    The BBC Dickens movies of the 2000s somehow took a dark, edgy turn, and the atmosphere of the Great Expectations one is one the darkest. The atmosphere is intentionally made gothic, nearly suggestive of a horror movie. And despite the darker moments in of Dickens, I still wouldn't call it that. 

    One a side note, the 1981 version sports what I consider the bet (meaning the most truly hateable) portrayals of Bentley Drummle, Pip's rival, played by Iian Ormsby-Knox. Much later, Mr. Omrsby-Knox and I became friends on facebook. When I asked if he was one who played Drummle, he acknowledged that, "I did, indeed!" 

Tale of Two Cities (1981)

 As a young child, I really didn't know of anything by Dickens other than Scrooge. In fact, I sometimes wondered if this man had ever written anything else. My first real exposure of Dickens beyond Scrooge was A Tale of Two Cities, in the then-current issue of Scope magazine, a publication for junior high kids. 

   At first I didn't care for the tale, because I small peasant boy gets run over by a callous noble in a carriage. Gaspard, the poor child's grieving father, later climbs into the marquis's bedchamber and murders him (I recall this scene vividly from the movie when it aired), but is caught and executed. The fault of the Marquis de Evermonde (for that is who it is, of course,) is not so much that he hit a child (that was an accident) as his callous response to it. I hated the deaths of children even back then. What's more, I really didn't understand most of the story, or it's political and ethical significance, including Carton's noble sacrifice at the end. I was just sad he got executed. I recall there was a paperback at the time that contained stills from the movie. 

    

The movie stars Chris Sanderson in the duel roles of Charles Darnay, the innocent heir to the Evermonde family, and Sydney Carton, the man who becomes his savior. And also Peter Cushing as Dr. Marnette. I can't recall the name of the actress who played Madame Defarge, but yes, that's her on the cover of Scope, and she does a marvelous job of being embittered and vengeful at what was done to her family by the Evermondes. DeFarge is, in fact, a very well crafted depiction of someone who has embraced whole heartedly the concept of collective guilt. She and her fanatic cohorts go well out of their way to use Manette's diary to convict Darnay of the crime of--basically, being an Evermonde. She even goes so far as to seek out Darnay's wife and young child to murder them before her fatal struggle with Miss Pross (Tell the fire and wind where to stop! I will have them all!) Even her husband, who rather grudgingly puts up with Darnay's conviction, rebels at this. A more devastating depiction of the evils of scapegoating there never was. 

Some years later, when the Clive Donner production of The Scarlet Pimpernel became my favorite of all movies, I tended to think of it as a Dickens movie, even though it was not. Pimpernel,was after all, part of my "big three" of Donner adaptations, long with Twist and Carol. All of these had scores by Nick and Tony Bicet, and some of the same actors had roles in each of them. Like Tale, Baroness Orczy's Pimpernel series relied very much on the concept of innocent people wrongly condemned merely for having been born into the former ruling class. Orczy was, admittedly, biased on the side of the aristos; she was a member of the Austrian aristocracy herself, and there was, as I recall, a rebellion when she was young, and she feared what might happen if it were taken too far. The villains in the Pimpernel novels, are not, for the most part, the starving and vengeful underclass, but the ambitious bourgeoisie, including Robespierre and Chauvelin who are primarily motivated by power, and use the rage of the disenfrancised to attain it. 

 Dickens, though, depicts terrible atrocities wrought by both callous and privileged aristos and fanatic revolutionaries. He crafts an accurate and disturbing portrait of human psychology, personified primarily in Madame Defarge. Through her, we are shown how and why humans are given to revenge and scapegoating. Even Dr. Manette's diary shows that even he, when imprisoned by the Evermonde's pens something in rage which he will later come to regret. Orczy never really goes that deep.

I didn't actually read Tale until college (though not for a class--they never seemed to have good classes on Dickens at Purdue), and a still remember haunting passages. One of the finest was during the real Darnay and family's flight from Paris: Look back, see if we are pursued!...the whole wild night rushes after us...but we are pursued by nothing else.

On a side note, I don't know much further about Chris Sanderson's acting career, but he did play the Frankenstein Monster on a Thanksgiving afternoon special. It was so dark and morbid I had to turn it off. Which I later learned was why it was so much truer to the original than most of the movies!

James Goldman's Oliver Twist movie Script

Today, I finished reading the Oliver Twist screenplay by James Goldman. This is the second draft, written in 1981. Filming with cast and crew began that fall, and you can see th fall leaves in some of the scenes. Nick Davies, the actor who played Dick, Oliver's fellow workhouse who tragically dies in the book, stated that there were several deleted scenes, including a long scene of dialogue between Dick and Oliver after being shut up in the cellar. Here are the deleted and scenes and major differences in the screenplay from what actually reached the screen:

1)The screenplay is more violent, as Bumble actually slaps Oliver for asking for more, knocking him to the floor. Later, Sowerberry also strikes Oliver after he breaks Claypole's nose.

2) After Oliver and Dick are thrown in the cellar, there is a long dialogue between them. They fear rats in the cellar, and Oliver swears he's get even with Bumble some day--as he does!

3) They pour a bucket over Oliver to wash him before he goes before the board.

4) Oliver says farewell to Mrs. Corney beofre he goes to live with the Sowerberrys. Mrs. Corney seems nicer here than in the book, where she's the one who becomes Mrs. Bumble.

5) Noah Claypole argues with Sowerberry about giving the part of silent mourner to Oliver instead of him (same as the Scope magazine teleplay for junior high).

6) Before running off to London, Oliver meets Dick a final time at the workhouse. The two children embrace, and say farewell to each other, just like in the book.

7) Oliver shows sOliver is seen rumaging through a garbage heap for food. He flees when a dog scres him off; in the later Detroit Times version, Oliver scrambles through fence first of an inn, then scrambles back to get away. THis was definitely a deleted scene, as you can see from the picture.

8)The script states outright that Oliver considers waking up the family before the burglary (again, like the book), before Sykes warns him not to even think of it.

9 In the final movie cut, Rose is teaching Oliver arithmetic in the scene before Oliver sees Fagin and Monks at the window. )In Goldman's script, Rose and Oliver are reading the Adventures of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable. Oliver asks her what a "liege" and she departs to fetch a dictionary. Oliver then continues reading by the garden window. Lancelot and Merlin casting spells on dragons are mentioned before Oliver notices the two stalkers and screams.

10) In the movie, Mrs. Bumble notes that Monks does not look like Oliver's mother, even though he claims she was his sister (he's lying). In the script she notes that while Monks is dark, Agnes is a ash-blonde as Oliver. This shows Richard Hill had already been cast as Oliver when he wrote this.

11)In the final movie cut, Rose is teaching Oliver arithmetic in the scene before Oliver sees Fagin and Monks at the window. )In Goldman's script, Rose and Oliver are reading the Adventures of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable. Oliver asks her what a "liege" and she departs to fetch a dictionary. Oliver then continues reading by the garden window. Lancelot and Merlin casting spells on dragons are mentioned before Oliver notices the two stalkers and scream.

12) At the very end, the script contiains this line of dialogue: :"You have given me my father and my mother. I'm not an orphan anymore. I have a name." Rose and Mr. Brownlow

each take him by the hand. They walk to their carraige togather.

There is no sign of the scene in which Brownlow and Rose are talking over Oliver's head on the lawn, or the one that shows Oliver and his new family gathered outside their estate.

According to Nick Davies on Youtube, there was deleted dialogue where it's brought out that Dick had died. There is none such in the script, at least this version.

James Goldman's script is very very beautifully written, and also brings out the suffering Oliver has to go through even more than the movie.

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