The Criterion Collection

New York’s Museum of Modern Art is ringing in the New Year with Dickens on Film, in honor of the writer’s bicentenary. The series surveys over a hundred years of screen adaptations of his work, from silent shorts at the turn of the century (such as surviving excerpts of the 1901 A Christmas Carol adaptation Scrooge, or Marley’s Ghost and D. W. Griffith’s 1909 The Cricket on the Hearth) to recent updates of his books, such as Alfonso Cuarón’s 1998 Great Expectations and the 2003 Canadian drama Twist. That, of course, is a modern-day retelling of the immortal Oliver Twist, one of the best screen versions of which you can see this week when MoMA shows David Lean’s superb 1948 adaptation on December 29. Watch the original trailer below.