Movie Review: Oliver Twist (1948) d. David Lean

Criterion Collection cover for Oliver Twist, directed by David Lean

Movie Review

Oliver Twist (1948)

d. David Lean

Criterion Collection #32

   Generally acclaimed as "the best" Oliver Twist adaptation,  David Lean's Oliver Twist is less well known in the United States, perhaps because Alec Guinness' grotesquely anti-Semitic portrayal of Fagin kept it out for several years after release.   Grim and expressionistic, Lean's Twist is very grown up, with a haunting, expressionistic quality that emphasizes the strangeness of the Victorian milieu of the book.

   Lean does an incredible job- both in this film and in Great Expectations, his other Criterion Collection Dickens movie, in synthesizing the much longer book into a film that still feels like it captures all the important moments of the book.