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Oliver Twist (1948) - Criterion Collection | 
 enlarge | Director: David Lean
Actors: Robert Newton, Alec Guinness, Kay Walsh, Francis L. Sullivan, John Howard Davies
Studio: Criterion
Category: DVD
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $27.40
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New (34) Used (14) from $17.85
Rating:  36 reviews
Sales Rank: 12138
Format: Black & White, Dolby, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: Unrated
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Academy Ratio
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 105 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 40
ISBN: 0780021282
UPC: 037429128121
EAN: 9780780021280
ASIN: B00000F17A
Theatrical Release Date: July 30, 1951
Release Date: January 12, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new Item. CD, DVD, Book, VHS more than 400 000 titles to choose from. ALL days Low Price !
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Amazon.com
David Lean's 1948 version of Charles Dickens' classic novel begins with a bang: the young hero's pregnant mother fighting her way through a storm, a perfect metaphor for Oliver's difficult road ahead. Set in a world of slums in the shadow of Victorian England, the story traces the boy's life in a workhouse and then with a gang of little pickpockets. A stark but good-looking film shot around some impressive sets, Lean's immortal adaptation is perhaps best known for Alec Guinness's remarkable (and slightly controversial) performance as Fagin, the old mentor to the gang of boy thieves. --Tom Keogh
Description
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 new digital transfer.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 31 more reviews...
 It's A Masterpiece! January 4, 2009
Lynn Ellingwood (Webster, NY United States)
Having David Lean's Oliver Twist on a Criterion Collection DVD is a dream come true. I've loved this film since I first saw it but was able to see more of it thanks to Criterion. The film has always had a crackly scratchy sound to it and the film was so dark the pictures were difficult to see. Criterion cleans up the negative and shows the film with crisp sound and a great picture. It is very enjoyable and less difficult to make out. If you haven't seen the film, it is definitely one you should.
All character actors should see this at leat ten times October 12, 2008
Theodore Shulman (NYC)
It's three must-see lessons in character-acting:
Anyone who thinks Alec Guiness can only play nice hasn't seen this. (Also must see KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS where he plays eight characters including an active guy in his early twenties, an old man frozen by Parkinsons' Disease and a woman.)
Robert Newton. Known for saying "Arrrrrrgh, Matey!" To see how incredibly versatile he was, compare this terrifying Sikes to his performance in Hitchcock's JAMAICA INN, where he plays what should be a flashy good-guy as a crashing bore.
Francis Sullivan uses fat comedically as well as anyone like Jackie Gleason or John Goodman. In fact the only better demonstration of the fat-guys' craft I can think of is Sydney Greenstreet. OK, Robert Morley too.
Staggeringly Great Film May 14, 2008
Anne Rice (Little Paradise, California)
There are plenty of reviews here urging you to watch this film. Let me say only this: watch it for two geniuses: one, David Lean who directed this masterpiece in daring and haunting style; and Alec Guinnis (sp.?) who plays Fagin. You will never forget this Fagin, not as long as you live. The film has some of the greatest camera work I've ever seen, such as the pub scene where the camera shows you what is going on with all the different characters without a word being said. There is also the long beginning without dialogue to show you the heights to which cinema can reach as art. ---- Go for it. This is priceless. It will make you want to read the book. It will make you want to know Dickens' world. -- For me, it's not a dated film at all, but an overwhelmingly intense experience on every level.
Simply Perfect. December 16, 2007
Kounrada Grimm (Los Angeles, CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There's nothing I can say that has not been said already but for the sake of giving this movie one more positive review and someone who's never seen it one more reason to see it, I shall embark upon this small quest. Legend is the life of Oliver Twist - full of rags and pain and hunger while his soul was ever alight with love of humanity. Dicken's work is so brilliant one would never believe that it could possibly be translated to the screen...well, for every other version in existence, that holds. But not for Lean's version. Brilliance matched brilliance and words became powerful images of driving rain and vile murderers...and kindly old gents. It is impossible for me not only to say what others haven't said but also to say how truly moving and awe-inspiring this movie is in the words it deserves. Heaven help you if you don't see it, for you will be missing one of the greatest stories of human existence and beauty.
Visual Poetry at it's best. November 27, 2007
Sean William Menzies
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As much as I like LAWRENCE OF ARABA, though still way too long, I have had to admit that this is David Lean's masterpiece. I saw it projected on the big screen at the Egyptian Theatre during a Lean Retrospective and it dropped my jaw. All of this talk about how LAWRENCE changed editing in motion pictures with its "match cut" blah, blah, blah, when Lean had been editing, or supervising the editing of his films like that all along. Trust American audiences not to believe anything unless it appears on their territory in the form of Columbia Studios and Sam Spiegel.
Anyway, this is a glorious adaptation of "Oliver Twist." Mercifully, the entire Maylie chapters have been excised and it illustrates just how useless that subplot was in the novel when one doesn't miss it and the story survives complete and whole without it. OT was a serial, in papers and magazines, before it was compiled for a novel, and one feels that Dickens is dragging things out when he brings in the unacceptable coincidence of the Maylie family. Oliver barely has lines in the novel, either, so accusations of turning him into a silent waif are unfounded. Dickens was quite aware that he was using Oliver as a device to show us the hideous underbelly of Victorian London and that's what this film is about - Fagin, Sikes and Nancy, and the natural price one pays by being an outlaw... or murderer.
I do think that Monks' connection to Oliver has suffered in this adaptation, because one is never sure why he believes Oliver's inheritance is rightfully his. Also, the last shot of the house in Pentonville is too clean; I understand that this is supposed to be in direct contrast to the horrible grime we've been living in for nearly two hours, but there are no other people on the street and it all seems too sterile, almost as if shot in Beverly Hills.
Still, a masterpiece, both visually and narratively. GREAT EXPECTATIONS is actually a warmer, more popular, old fashioned film, but this second adaptation of Lean's will leave you looking at the world in a slightly different camera angle.
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