Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist (1948) - (The Criterion Collection) As part of the Criterion Collection, you can expect certain quirks and oddities in the film, as the goal of the company is to restore old films, and in this case, I'm very glad they did.

Unlike the musical version, or any other version I've seen (of perhaps three or four), this version's antagonists really antagonized. Alec Guinness plays the money-grubbing, scheming, Jewish Fagan, and the moment I realized that he wanted Sykes to kill Nancy (planned it! Schemed for it!), I actually gasped out loud. I'm not sure who to blame for the antisemitism, having never read the book, but it wouldn't actually surprise me if Dickens himself were the culprit. To be fair, though, Dickens has written several similar characters, and the majority spring from the London culture (which Dickens harshly critiqued), and not from abroad, necessarily (unlike Holmes villains, who are almost always either foreign, or female).

Several of the scenes toward the end of this film contain weighty art-shots and significant pauses for emphasis, and I enjoyed the skill with which the crew put them together, and the time they give the audience to digest what they have and have not seen. Perhaps these moments stood out to me because of the silence. Try it for yourself and decide.

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