The guy in front of me in the cinema was the spitting image of the Abel Magwitch on the screen - at least from behind. When you see Finlay Currie's Magwitch, you'll realise this is no joke. He's a gruff and alarming, just as he should be.
The opening scenes are great, but the film can't sustain them - unlike Dickens's novel, which is almost unique in the way it awakes our interest in the child and goes on to DEEPEN our interest in the adult. On screen it's often hard to see much in the mature Pip. Still, the mature Pip is far from being a disaster, and Alec Guinness's Herbert gives us a strong vicarious liking for the man (which, again, is as it should be).
And yet the story just continues to deteriorate as it approaches its end. David Lean knew that he wouldn't be able to include everything from the book - Orlick, for instance, is nowhere to be seen - but the film has the appearance of filling in detail more and more hastily as it goes along. The amount of narration sharply increases - always a bad sign. The entire character of Bentley Drummle is given to us in voice-over narration, when Pip casually mentions that (a) Estella is engaged to him, and (b) he's not very nice. Since we don't actually SEE how odious he is, we don't have much reason to believe Pip on this point - yet, of course, it is ESSENTIAL that we know not just that Drummle is odious but that we feel the very same desire Pip does to pick him up and throw him in a fireplace (or something of that kind).
The Hollywoodish ending is worst of all. I don't know why it's always been fashionable to lament the way Dickens ends the novel. His published ending was at least much better than the one he first wrote out; and every attempt I've seen to fiddle with Dickens's published ending is a flat failure.
I won't deny that Lean's film has a certain style. It certainly has potential. The main problem, I think, is the difficulty of turning `Great Expectations' into a good film. He did much better two years later with `Oliver Twist'.
The opening scenes are great, but the film can't sustain them - unlike Dickens's novel, which is almost unique in the way it awakes our interest in the child and goes on to DEEPEN our interest in the adult. On screen it's often hard to see much in the mature Pip. Still, the mature Pip is far from being a disaster, and Alec Guinness's Herbert gives us a strong vicarious liking for the man (which, again, is as it should be).
And yet the story just continues to deteriorate as it approaches its end. David Lean knew that he wouldn't be able to include everything from the book - Orlick, for instance, is nowhere to be seen - but the film has the appearance of filling in detail more and more hastily as it goes along. The amount of narration sharply increases - always a bad sign. The entire character of Bentley Drummle is given to us in voice-over narration, when Pip casually mentions that (a) Estella is engaged to him, and (b) he's not very nice. Since we don't actually SEE how odious he is, we don't have much reason to believe Pip on this point - yet, of course, it is ESSENTIAL that we know not just that Drummle is odious but that we feel the very same desire Pip does to pick him up and throw him in a fireplace (or something of that kind).
The Hollywoodish ending is worst of all. I don't know why it's always been fashionable to lament the way Dickens ends the novel. His published ending was at least much better than the one he first wrote out; and every attempt I've seen to fiddle with Dickens's published ending is a flat failure.
I won't deny that Lean's film has a certain style. It certainly has potential. The main problem, I think, is the difficulty of turning `Great Expectations' into a good film. He did much better two years later with `Oliver Twist'.