For this series Paul Loosley examines the cinema canon of Britain’s most celebrated author. Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) has a meaningful connection to the parish. He lived from 1839 at 1 Devonshire Terrace, in a house now long gone but still commemorated with a relief sculpture on the corner of Marylebone High Street. Dickens wrote some 20 novels and each was a tour de force of story, prose, morality and social commentary. The workhouse, the debtor’s goal, the pickpocket, the cruelly destitute together with characters like Magwitch, Winkle, Smike, Bumble and Ebenezer mark Dickens as the undisputed literary voice of Victorian England. There have been at least 40 films made from Dicken’s novels. And in this series, we shall be discussing and viewing 6 of the most notable. All, 1 Devonshire Terrace. St Marylebone Parish Church beyond. more by coincidence than design, produced during the post war period from 1947-1958 and all black and white British classics in their own right. And all unmissable. Before each screening Paul will discuss each film for approximately 30 minutes, giving insights into Dickens, the novel and the production of the film. Altogether an interesting, instructive and enlightening evening that will also contribute to the welfare of one of London’s most historic and beautiful places of worship.
1. January 14th. A Christmas Carol. (1951) 1hr 27’
Possibly the most continually filmed and staged of any of Dicken’s stories, it is an almost indispensable part of the Christmas season. A story not only of redemption but of injustice; a line that runs through Dicken’s work like a thread of sadness and outrage. This film captures the contrasts between good and evil, city and countryside, with a cast that positively bursts with British cinema’s most famous character actors who, together with Alistair Sim’s wonderfully ‘humbug’ Scrooge, breath life, humanity (and spirit) into Christmas.
2. January 28th. Oliver Twist. (1948) 1hr 56’
Possibly Dicken’s most famous work. Oliver Twist is the quintessential illustration of Victorian inequality and social injustice wrapped in a yarn of drama and sentiment seen through the eyes of a young orphan. David Lean directs a masterpiece of cinema bringing to life, via superb black and white photography, every drop of emotion in the characters of Fagin, Bill Sykes, the Artful Dodger played with gusto by Alec Guinness, Robert Newton and Anthony Newley. Altogether a parable that leaves one asking, ‘can I have some more, sir?’.
3. February 11th. Nicholas Nickleby. (1947) 1hr 48’
Written by Dickens at Devonshire Terrace, we follow the life and adventures of another superbly observed protagonist. A young kindly young man who struggles with the firsthand experience of desperation and insecurity for him and his family at the hand of a callous uncle. Unfairly compared with Lean’s films, the performances of Cedrick Hardwick, Bernard Miles and Sybil Thorndike, and the excellent sets, costumes, editing and photography give it a well-deserved place in Dicken’s filmic canon.
4. March 3rd. A Tale of Two Cites. (1958) 1hr 57’
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’, possible the most indelible opening lines of any in British literature. The redemption of an incorrigible sybarite, Sydney Carton, who, during the French Revolution, gives his life for another is probably the closest in narrative morality to the Christian ethic of redemption and self-sacrifice. Filmed partly in the Loire Valley, it is sumptuous and expansive. Driven by a cast of immediately recognizable faces, led by the outrageously foppish Dirk Bogarde.
5. March 17t.h. The Pickwick Papers. (1952) 1hr 55’
Dicken’s first major work, the adventures of the eponymous hero as he travels around England in the search of questionable knowledge. It is a hilarious catalogue of balls, trials, duels and embarrassments; filled with dandies, cheeky chappies, swooning ladies and corpulent bumblers. The film moves effortlessly from wonderful sets to evocative locations extracting from the events the maximum humour. And again, scenes are peppered liberally with some of British cinema’s most superb comic actors.
6. March 24th. Great Expectations. (1946) 1hr 58’
Pip, a blacksmith’s step-brother, rises, by virtue of an anonymous benefactor, to become a gentleman. More or less a karmic dissertation on good evoking good, bad evoking bad and spite and cruelty delivering just retribution. Of Lean’s two Dickens’ films it is possibly his best. The Oscar-winning photography is exceptional. The interiors and the locations, especially Miss Havisham’s House and the Thames Estuary Marshes, certainly contribute to the film being rated as the fifth greatest ever British Film.