SYNOPSIS: Expressionistic noir photography suffuses David Lean’s Oliver Twist with a nightmarish quality, fitting its bleak, industrial setting. In Dickens’ classic tale, an orphan wends his way from cruel apprenticeship to den of thieves in search of a true home. Here Alec Guinness is the quintessential Fagin, his controversial performance fully restored in Criterion’s digital transfer.
| Bill Sykes | Robert Newton |
| Fagin | Alec Guinness |
| Nancy | Kay Walsh |
| Mr. Bumble | Francis L. Sullivan |
| Mr. Brownlow | Henry Stephenson |
| Mrs. Corney | Mary Clare |
| Artful Dodger | Anthony Newley |
| Oliver Twist | John Howard Davies |
| Director | David Lean |
| Producer | Ronald Neame |
| Music | Sir Arnold Bax |
| Costumes | Margaret Furse |
| Editing | Jack Harris |
| Cinematography | Guy Green |
| Screenplay | David Lean and Stanley Haynes |
| Based on the novel by | Charles Dickens |
By January 11, 1999
David Lean followed his prodigious adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations with this brilliant crystallization of Dickens’ Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy’s Progress. It deploys the cinema’s special Read more »
April 21, 2011
British filmmaker Ronald Neame, the director of such Criterion titles as The Horse’s Mouth, Tunes of Glory, and Hopscotch (not to mention The Poseidon Adventure), and the producer behind David Lean’s Read more »
