UK 118m Dir: David Lean Key Cast: John Mills
Based on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (Novel)
David Lean saw a version of Great Expectations on the stage and realised it would make a great film. He brought several of the stage actors to the screen including Alec Guinness as Herbert Pocket in his first speaking screen role.
Pip Pirrip (John Mills) is an orphan who grows up with a blacksmith. As a child he meets several unusual characters- he helps escaped convict Magwitch (Finlay Currie) and visits Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt), a jilted bride who has spent years hiding in her house. He also meets Estella (Jean Simmons/Valerie Hobson) who he falls in love with. When he reaches adulthood he is approached by lawyer Mr. Jaggers (Francis L. Sullivan) who informs him that a mysterious benefactor wants to pay for him to have the life of a gentleman. Pip sees this as an opportunity to marry Estella but things are so simple.
I think this is a great adaptation. Dickens wrote great stories but most of them are long and winding and need adapting for the screen in a way that prevents them from becoming impenetrable. Lean squeezes Great Expectations into a 118-minute film, excising significant characters but somehow still sticking to the spirit of the original story. I especially liked that some of Dickens' humour is kept in, something few adaptions tend to do, with a sequence of cows 'talking' to the young Pip and a genuinely hilarious sequence involving 'Aged P', an old man who is happy if you just nod at him occasionally.
Some have criticized the fact that John Mills was much older than the early twenties Pip he was playing. I didn't have huge problems with it, not least because Pip is largely a narrator, a vessel for the other characters to interact with. I think Great Expectations has some of Dickens' best characters- Magwitch is genuinely unsettling early in the story but develops interestingly when he reappears. Miss Havisham is one of the greatest literary characters of all time, this woman who was rejected on her wedding day and has never recovered, hiding in a dark room and seeking revenge on the world.
The film feels very cinematic, even if is somewhat different from the sweeping epics Lean became known for. It takes cues from horror films, especially the early parts set on the marshes and a foggy churchyard- most horror directors would kill to have created such an effective atmosphere. The first-person narration of the book is kept without being over-used, working perfectly to breezily move the plot along. The climax on the River Thames is genuinely exciting and there's a short sequence that feels like it belongs in an action film.
Probably the best adaption of a Dickens work on film, at least without starring Muppets.
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