"GREAT EXPECTATIONS"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 419, 4 July 1947, Page 24

"GREAT EXPECTATIONS"

(Rank-Cineguild)

HE British film-makers, : having overcome Shakespeare and subdued Shaw, are now all set to wrestle in earnest with Dickens.

Screen versions of at least five of his novels are now either completed, under way, or projected. It is a tough assignment, for there is in Dickens a quality which resists translation to a medium normally so literal and realistic as the screen, and I would not like to predict who will have the verdict at the end of the fifth round. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that David Lean and his associates at Cineguild emerge with great credit from their first encounter. Great Expectations is not only good ‘entertainment — it is also good Dickens. The only production with which one may properly compare itand by no means to the disadvantage of the new work--is David Copperfield, wherein Hollywood once did an admittedly fine job. The secret of this new British film’s success is its producers’ clear recognition of the fact that the essential quality of Dickens lies in his exuberance of imagination, his almost excessive pilingup of fanciful detail, so that his characters often come within an inch of being caricatures and his plots do not escape being sheer melodrama. I think it quite likely that if this story lacked the magic name, and therefore the cachet, of Dickens; if it were possible for it to be presented to us as merely the creation of some enterprising studio script-writer, a good many of us (myself probably included) would think that the author, while spinning a rattling good yarn, was putting far too big a strain on our credulity with his fantastic coincidences, his altogether too neat tying-up of loose ends. If you could look at this film cold-bloodedly, you might well think that the revelation that Estella is the long-lost. child of Pip’s convict benefactor, coming on top of all tha other conveniently-con-trived climaxes, is too much to swallow. RUT the point is, of course, that you | can’t look at this film cold-bloodedly because, in the first place, Dickens wrote it, and he is a master of impro--bable tales; and because, in the second place, it has been transferred to the screen with the full, rich flavour of the original. It is a long time since I read Great Expectations, and I cannot now

be sure that the film follows the novel to the letter (one or two minor ~*racters seem to have be2n dropped1.' td. I suspect that a small liberty has ‘een taken with ‘the finale). But the spirit of the whole piece is undeniably and magnificently Dickensian. All.the flourishes are there, both of narrative and characterisation; the settings, whether of the marshes, Miss Havisham’s putrescent bridal-chamber, Mr. Jaggers’s legal offices, or Pip’s rooms in London, are florid and sometimes grotesque, yet authentic; the early scenes, particularly Pip’s encounter with the escaped convict in the churchyard, are done in the grand manner and carry a_ genuine thrill; the atmosphere of mystery thereafter is, I think, sustained at least as well as Dickens himself sustained it; and surely nobody else can write dialogue so fruity, quaint, and satisfying. The producers have, however, done much more than merely abstain from blowing the froth off the brimming tankard. As in almost all of Dickens, the characters of Great Expectations are larger than life-size but there is life inside them all the time: exaggeration to the point of eccentricity and even of caricature does not make them foreign to our understanding and appreciation. And this underlying vitality, this fullblooded warmth which gives the characters their validity in far-fetched situations and their durability through the years, has somehow-thank-Hheavens!-been retained in the acting and transferred to the screen. It is hard to know which of the cast to praise most — whether Anthony Wager and Jean Simmons for their engaging portrayals of the young Pip and Estella (though the former’s accent is perhaps too cultured for the part); Francis L. Sullivan for his gargantuan portrait of Jaggers; Finlay Currie. for his whole-hearted performance as Magwitch; Bernard Miles as the gentle Joe Gargery; or Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham. Portraying the grown-up Pip and Estella, John Mills and Valerie Hobson do not quite measure up to the standard of their hc ful counterparts, but perhaps neither these characters in the novel: I thi it goes without arguing that the early portion of Great Expectations is th better. * * Es HIS British film has, of course, its faults; but for the most part these are the faults of the original. If they (continued on next page)

(continued on next page) can make such a good job of this. story by Dickens, we ‘may now look forward with anticipation instead of trepidation to the promised screen versions of Nicholas Nickelby, Oliver Twist, Pickwick Papers, and Bleak House. And I do wish somebody would have a. shot at Barnaby Rudge-there’s surely good ‘screen material there.

DEAD RECKONING

(Columbia)

ERE is Hollywood: still | talking tough and still be- | having more than a little foolishly. Here again..is the hard-bitten hero (Humphrey

_ Bogart) becoming, without any scruples, law unto himself, dodging the cops s well as the crooks, getting himself drugged, slugged, and "worked over" by a flabby sadist (Marvin Miller) who likes. soft music, emerging bloody but | unbowed from this ordeal to eliminate his enemies with hand grenades, and finally receivingy a bullet in the ribs "rom. his girl-friend when he is about ‘to hand her over to the police and the electric-chair. And why does he endure all this? Why does he insist that the lady must "fry," as he so delicately puts it, when she has just suggested a much more alluring alternative? Why? Because he wants only to clear his dead biddy’s name of suspicion of murder, so that the dear lad may posthumously receive the Congressional Medal of Honour. That means more to him than anything. Yes, these tough guys-even a casehardened specimen like Mr, Bogart — are really just big softies at heart; they’re as susceptible as anybody to that excessive sentimentality which one may be excused for regarding as an American characteristic-that phoney appeal to the emotions which is, of course, found most conspicuously in the Hollywood movie, but which is reflected also in American advertisements, pulp literature, radio features, and popular music. For the first half-hour or so, Dead Reckoning manages to engage your attention, if only because it’s so cryptic that it keeps you guessing, and because there’s the slick veneer of clever camerawork and John Cromwell’s direction. Also there’s Mr. Bogart himself, who has done this sort of thing so often that he can scarcely help being technically ‘proficient at it, But as soon as you set your teeth into the story the shell collapses, and there’s the soft and cloying centre. As for the other star of this piece, she’s Lizabeth Scott, an actress who must have seen Lauren Bacall once (or even twice) and has never forgotten. It’s hard to believe that anyone can find anything to admire in the ‘part she plays or the way she plays it: the "heroine" of this story, if not exactly is certainly unwholesome*and would be more so if she were not "vidiculous. Well, after this I’m even less inclined to criticise Dickens for writing stories » which are artificial and long-winded and for creating characters that are grotesque+and incredible. Compared witha Dead Reckoning, Great Expectations is ~ a plain, straightforward tale, peopled with human, everyday types.