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!"
No comments:
Post a Comment