Directed by: David Lean.
Written by: David Lean & Ronald Neame & Anthony Havelock-Allan & Kay Walsh & Cecil McGivern based on the novel by Charles Dickens.
Starring: John Mills (Pip), Tony Wager (Young Pip), Valerie Hobson (Estella), Jean Simmons (Young Estella), Bernard Miles (Joe Gargery), Francis L. Sullivan (Mr. Jaggers), Finlay Currie (Magwitch), Martita Hunt (Miss Havisham), Alec Guinness (Herbert Pocket), Ivor Barnard (Mr. Wemmick), Freda Jackson (Mrs.Joe), Eileen Erskine (Biddy).
David
Lean’s 1946 version of Great Expectations is seen by all as the quintessential
screen version of Charles Dickens’ classic novel – and with good reason. It is
clearly the best version that I have seen, with gorgeous cinematography and
production design. The film almost plays like a horror movie when we enter the
enormous, crumbling mansion of Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt), who of course is
the villain of the piece, as her actions forever damage and warp two children.
Above all, Great Expectations is a movie about child abuse – not the overt
kind, but the more subtle, psychological kind that can be even more damaging.
The
story is well known by all. Young Pip (Tony Wager) is an orphan being raised by
his cruel sister (Freda Jackson) and her kindly husband Joe (Bernard Miles) – a
lowly blacksmith in the English countryside. While visiting the graves of his
parents, he meets Magwitch (Finlay Currie), an escaped convict, who threatens
him and tells him to come back the next morning with something he can cut his
chains off with. Pip does this – and even though the convict, and his cohort,
who he despises, get caught, it is not because of Pip. Pip then comes to the
attention of Miss Havisham who wants him to come over to her crumbling mansion
to play with Estella (Jean Simmons), her young charge, who at first doesn’t
want to play with this “peasant”, but is talked into by Miss Havisham – who
tells her she can “break his heart”. Havisham is a bitter, lonely woman, who
refuses to leave her mansion, or change it in the least, since she was stood up
on her wedding day decades before. She is angry at all men, and sees her chance
to get revenge on them through Estella.
Years
pass, and although Pip is in love with Estella, she has moved away, and he has
become an apprentice to Joe. And then a lawyer – Mr. Jaggers (Francis L.
Sullivan) arrives to take Pip (now John Mills) away with him to London. He has
an anonymous benefactor, who wants to make Pip into a proper gentlemen.
Naturally, Pip assumes this benefactor is Miss Havisham, who wants to turn him
into a gentleman so he can marry Estella (no Valrie Hobson). He moves to London
to share a flat with Herbert Pocket (a wonderful Alec Guiness in his first
major role) – hopefully to woe Estella, who unfortunately has become exactly
what Miss Havisham wants her to be.
Few
black and white film look better than Lean’s film here. The Oscar winning
cinematography (by Guy Green) is magnificent – from the foggy opening scene in
the graveyard, to the horror movie stylings of Miss Havisham’s, to the bustling
streets of London is wonderful. The screenplay has pretty much served as the
model for all future feature adaptations of Dickens’ epic novel, as it pares
away much of the enormous plot and supporting characters of the novel to focus
exclusively on Pip and his journey.
The
movie, it must be said, is not without faults. John Mills was far too old to
play Pip – who is supposed to be in his early 20s, and Mills was nearly 40 at
the time. I was going to write that Mills is also bland in the role of Pip, but
the truth is, Pip is a bland character. Much like Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the
central character is perhaps the least interesting one in the novel – a
character needed to get all the colorful supporting characters in the film. And
they are colorful – from Finlay Currie’s scary Magwitch, to Hunt’s wonderful,
ghostlike Havisham, to Sullivan’s large, humorless lawyer, to Guiness’ amusing
Pocket, to Bernard Miles’ decent Joe, to Hobson and Simmons’ combing for the
screen most beautiful Estella, the cast that surrounds Mills is far greater
than he is.
And
it also must be said, like every other version of Great Expectations I have
seen, I was more drawn into the story’s beginning – with the children – then
the second half, with them as adults. And Lean adds a needlessly happy ending
to Great Expectations – eliminating 11 years in which Pip travels to Egypt, and
Estella was married to the abusive Bentley Drummie, and eliminating all the
ambiguity of Dickens’ ending as to the fate of Pip and Estella. Yes, it gives
the audience what it wants, but it doesn’t really fit with the rest of movie –
a criticism that some have of the end of the novel, which was re-written by
Dickens to make it a happier ending.
Still,
these are minor quibbles with a great movie. David Lean had already directed a
number of highly thought of film by this time – most notably Brief Encounter
(1945). After the romance of that film, he wanted to make something darker, and
Great Expectations, aside from the ending, counts. It is one of the great
British films of its time – and one of Lean’s very best movies.
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