Let's Twist Again

[poliphilo]

The last TV adaption of Oliver Twist dramatised the backstory. We got to find out about Oliver's ma and her amours-and Oliver himself didn't get born until the end of episode one.  But it's such a familiar story, you really need to do something a bit different to grab the punters' interest.

I remember a version from my childhood which was so violent (by the standards of the time) that my dad went and stood in front of the screen during the murder of Nancy. So did Sikes kill her with a cudgel or the butt end of his pistol? I remember having heated debates about that in the playground.  Poor little kids- we were so woefully starved of TV violence in the 50s. 

Please sir, I want some more. Of course, my dear. Here's the shadow of Sikes danging from a rope. Ooh- whizzo!

The latest version- according to the Radio Times- is the 49th. So many? I had not dreamed death had undone so many. Coming so soon after Polanski's big screen version it seems a bit de trop. What they're hooking us in with this time is the prospect of Timothy Spall as Fagin. Wow, the first fat Fagin! Oh and they've got a black Nancy- Sophie Okonedo- and why not? There were plenty of black people on the streets of Victorian London.

I'm not sure why this particular Dickens novel has us by the balls. It's not his best- not by a long chalk;  it's not particularly well plotted and there aren't too many laughs.  I put it down to Fagin (one of the biggest chaarcters in Eng Lit) and two iconic moments- the thing with the gruel and the thing with the cudgel (or was it a pistol butt?). Dickens all but killed himself - and probably shortened his life- doing dramatised readings of the murder of Nancy. It was his biggest hit. And now I think of it I don't suppose there'd been anything quite like it ever before. English crime fiction starts here. 

Will I watch it? I don't know. Can I be bothered?  But I'm building up a head of steam to re-read the book.

Comments

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

The version you remember is almost certainly David Lean's 1948 film, which is still the best cinematic version of Oliver Twist.
Polanksi's version had probably the best script--the adaptation cut almost all the fat from the novel--but the direction seemed a bit tired, and it looked like a masterpiece theater production.
The core of Dicken's novel--poor orphan boy out on the streets, at the mercy of Fagin, Sykes, and cruel orphanage dictators--has survived thanks to its intensity, which is no mean feat considering how much padding Dickens encased those elements within. If Lean had somehow used the script from Polanski's film, I'd consider the result the definitive adaptation (though Alec Guinness's Fagin is problematic, it's better than Ben Kingsley's).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No, it wasn't the Lean version (which I have on my shelf and keep meaning to watch) it was definitely a BBC classic serial- shown in weekly parts on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. I couldn't tell you anything more about it.

I tend to avoid Dickens adaptions. I love the originals so much I shy away from seeing them messed about with. I enjoyed the recent BBC Bleak House- which improved on the original in some respects (ie by tightening up the plot)- but it wasn't really Dickens- not by a long chalk.

The greatness of Dickens is not just in the characters and the dialogue, it's in the authorial voice- with its glorious rhetoric and constant stream of jokes and bizarre imagery. Take the opening chapter of Bleak House for example- that fantastical, panoramic vision of a fog-bound London, featuring hypothetical dinosaurs and mud "accumulating at compound interest"- there's no way a dramatisation can capture more than a tiny fraction of what's going on in Dickens' prose.