Charles Dickens and David Lean would twice prove to be a match made in the heavens. Drawing on Dickens's rich characters and gothic Victorian atmosphere, Lean fashioned two of the greatest novel adaptations ever committed to film. This film was the first of the pair. Some say that novels and films are just not very compatible art forms, but if books are from Mars and movies are from Jupiter, then Lean has happily situated his adaptations, like Ceres, in the asteroid belt in between.

Historical Background: Charles Dickens (1812-70), born in Portsmouth, England, grew up in poverty, especially during the year or so that his father spent in debtors' prison, when Charles was eleven. He experienced the child labor practices that were rampant in Victorian England while working in a dye warehouse. Nevertheless, his natural gifts broke through and he gained employment at a reporter, covering the House of Commons, for London Newspapers. In 1837, he published, together with artist Robert Seymour, the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, earning himself a reputation as a passionate new literary talent. Dickens then wrote Oliver Twist between 1837-9, Nicholas Nickleby in 1838-9, Old Curiosity Shop in 1840-1, A Christmas Carol in 1843, David Copperfield in 1849-50, Bleak House in 1852-3, Little Dorrit in 1855-7, and A Tale of Two Cities in 1859, among other works. All the while, he engaged in lecture tours (in America in 1842, for example), spoke out against slavery, managed a touring theatrical company, edited weekly magazines, and read his own works in public (beginning in 1858). This was a man of prodigious output and he was rewarded by enormous popularity. So, by 1860, when Dickens sat down to pen Great Expectations, he was no longer the youthful and unpolished novelist who had created Oliver Twist more than two decades earlier. He had achieved a large measure of whatever great expectations he or others had imagined for him.

The two greatest strengths of Dickens as an author were the richness of his characters and his social conscience. One might add his sense of humor as a third. All of these strengths are evident in Great Expectations, although the element of social conscience is more subdued than in, say, Oliver Twist. The satirical treatment of class distinctions is still in evidence. Dickens's novels are largely character-driven, rather than plot-driven. Thus, successful adaptations hinge most especially on the vividness with which the characters are developed by the director and the actors. As was often the case with the novels of Dickens, Great Expectations rambles a bit and the plot hinges too much on coincidence and happenstance.

David Lean's 1946 adaptation of Great Expectations is often cited as the finest adaptation ever made of any Dickens's novel. It is perhaps surprising, therefore, that Lean had never read the novel before beginning the film. In fact, Lean's experience with Dickens was limited to a reading of The Christmas Carol. Lean had some personal experience to draw on, however, in relation to the theme of family detachment. As a young man, Lean had married a cousin who bore him a son. Lean supported both the woman and the child financially, but otherwise had very little contact with them.

In 1946, Lean was also still at an early stage in his career as a film director. His first four directorial experiences (one as a co-director and three as solo-director) had all consisted of adaptations of plays by Noël Coward, the most successful of which was Brief Encounter (1945), which won a Palme d'Or from Cannes. Great Expectations was Lean's first film in which he was out from Coward's long shadow, though he was still dealing with relatively safe material in adapting a novel by Dickens. Lean was sensitive to the criticism, early in his career, that he was conservative in his selection of source material and later became preoccupied with producing something both "lasting and original."

The Story: Many of you know the story, so I'll keep this synopsis brief. The young Pip (Anthony Wager) is an orphan who lives with his overbearing sister (Freda Jackson) and kindly brother-in-law, Joe Gargery (Bernard Miles), the village blacksmith. He sets out to visit the grave of his parents in the nearby churchyard on a foggy evening, as the wind howls ominously. Suddenly, amid the gravestones, a convict, Abel Magwitch (Finlay Currie), escaped from the nearby prison galleys, accosts the terrified Pip. The man demands that the boy bring him a file and some vittles and warns him that if he tells anybody or fails to return, a young man will come to tear his heart from his chest. He makes Pip swear an oath. Pip duly returns in the morning and briefly spies a second scar-faced escapee in the marshes before finding Magwitch. Magwitch and the scar-faced convict are archenemies. Later in the day, a contingent of guards comes round to conduct a search for the escapees. They discover Magwitch and the other man wrestling in the mud. It seems that their hatred for one another is so deep, that each would prefer to be caught than to allow the other one to escape. Pip is careful to signal to Magwitch, non-verbally, that he had nothing to do with his capture.

A year passes by. A wealthy woman, Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt), who lives nearby, invites Pip to come and play at her home. She wants a little spark of life in the house. And why not? She's a mad old creature who has shut herself away in darkness for many years because she was jilted on her wedding day. The elongated wedding table remains set as it was on that day, complete with a wedding cake, now thoroughly encrusted with mold. Miss Havisham has a beautiful daughter (adopted, actually) named Estella (Jean Simmons), who she has brought up to be ladylike, proper, snobbish, and cruel. The man-hating Miss Havisham hopes to ultimately unleash Estella, as a proper mantrap, to break as many hearts as possible and thereby wreak her revenge on the male species. Pip is to be practice, in effect. Sure enough, Pip is overwhelmed by Estella beauty and dignified attitude of superiority and finds himself thinking about her day and night. Pip also meets a young Herbert Pocket (John Forrest), a young relative of Miss Havisham, and decks him in a fistfight. Pip decides that he wants to be a gentleman when he grows up, imagining it to be a profession that one merely chooses, so that he can win Estella.

Strangely enough, Pip gets just that opportunity, at age twenty. A secret benefactor, using the solicitor Mr. Jaggers (Francis L. Sullivan) as a conduit, provides Pip with an income so that he can go to London and live among the idle rich. Decked out in a new suit, Pip (now John Mills) arrives in London and is set up as a roommate of the same Herbert Pocket (now Alec Guinness) that he had met and bloodied as a boy. Pip gradually assumes the manners (and snobbery) of the wealthy. He reencounters Estella (now played by Valerie Hobson), who has come to London to be shown about high society and to fulfill her intended role as cruel heartbreaker. She warns Pip that she has no heart, no softness, and no sentiment. Her indifference toward him is, in fact, as close as she can come to caring, since all those to whom she gives her flirtatious attentions are intended to be victims.

In time, Pip will discover the identity of his benefactor. That in turn will trigger new adventures, as Pip, once again, tries to help out the old felon. Estella takes up with the pompous Bentley Drummle (Torin Thatcher), but can it last? Lean puts a bit of a different spin on the story's conclusion than did Dickens, so don't assume you know how it all turns out, from having read the novel.

Themes: I imagine that Dickens's main theme was the somewhat arbitrary nature of class. By the time the story is done, two persons from the working class have experienced a somewhat arbitrary elevation to the gentry, but discovered how cruel, unbending, and, ultimately, empty, the life of the idle rich can be. In Lean's filmed version of the story, these issues are shown, but not very explicitly developed as ideas. Those already familiar with Dickens will easily transfer the thematic points from the novel, but those encountering the story for the first time from the film may overlook the social message altogether.

My own perception about the influence of class on psychology of individuals differs somewhat from what Dickens portrays. I've generally observed that those born into wealth often grow up to be idle playboys and debutantes, but those who struggle to reach the upper class seldom become idle when they get there. Think of Bill Gates, for example, who continues to wheel and deal and amass his fortune despite being one of the wealthiest men alive. We develop our work habits, drive, and motivation as we are growing up, based in part on the class to which we belong at the time, and those characteristics don't typically change very much if our social class rises or falls later in life.

The idle rich lead an empty existence; the idle poor even more so. The industrious poor must struggle, but have a shot at some happiness along the way. Obviously, the most favorable alternative is to be among the industrious wealthy. The combination of will and means is unbeatable. It isn't until the end of the story that Pip truly acquires "great expectations." A man or woman who aspires merely to be idle is not a person of great expectations, but a couple in love (or a single person), charging out into the sunlight full of hopes and ambitions – now, those are great expectations!

Production Values: As an adaptation, Lean's film is truer than not to the source material. He has captured not only the robust qualities of the characters and the major details of the story, but also, what is even more important with Dickens, the nobility and humanity of the novel. Purists will complain that some characters have been omitted (notably Orlick), subplots have been pared back, and scenes have been shortened or compressed, but these are exactly the kinds of steps that are required to render Dickens's convoluted plots suitable for cinema.

Lean gained a mastery of an axiom once advanced by Winston Churchill in relation to public speaking. Always start off with a really strong opening that grabs audience interest, because the one time you can be certain of having their attention is at the beginning. Lean opens the film with an eerie, tense, gothic rendition of the famous graveyard scene, where Pip stands toe-to-toe with Abel Magwitch, the escaped convict. You're drawn in immediately. At the same time, the key characters of the story are effectively introduced.

If there's a weakness in the screenplay, it's that the social commentary is relatively muted. We observe the differences in dress, manners, and luxuries of the working class versus the gentry, but the implications inherent in those differences are not made explicit. Lean would do a better job with the social issues in his next Dickens adaptation, Oliver Twist.

Cinematographer Guy Green won an Oscar for the magnificence of his black-and-white images and the gothic quality they evoke. This film makes one regret that filmmakers have all but abandoned the old black-and-white method of filming. Certainly, it's not to be recommended for routine use, but for a film of this nature, it is ideal. There's nothing like black-and-white to emphasize shadows, silhouettes, gloom, and lurking threats. Thematically, black-and-white helps to suggest dichotomies, such as good vs. evil, rich vs. poor, and love vs. hate. Black-and-white emphasizes contrast, both literally and figuratively. Color technology was already well developed in 1946, so Green and Lean were making an explicit choice to go with chiaroscuro.

The sets are so effective in invoking 19th century England that one imagines the smell of Old English leather. Especially in the smithy. The musical score in nicely matched to the time and place. The use of environmental sounds is exceptional. In the opening scene, we hear the creaking of tree limbs and the howling of the wind as Pip makes his way to the graveyard, to visit his parents' gravesite. We hear the piping of a bird in what may be the only instance in film of a pun inherent in a sound effect. Soon, Pip encounters the frightening escaped convict, Magwitch. Much later, when Magwitch reappears in Pip's life, the wind is howling once again, in the same manner, nicely linking the two events through sound.

This film introduced two actors who would go on to great careers, John Mills and Alec Guinness. Mills has the lead role in this film, as the adult Pip. Mills gives a great performance but my one problem with this film was that Mills is not my idea of a romantic lead. I thought he was absolutely magnificent in Hobson's Choice as a comedic, romantic lead, but he doesn't serve as well as a more conventional romantic lead. That's just my personal bias, however. Mills went on to appear in Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939), In Which We Serve (1942), Hobson's Choice (1954), War and Peace (1956), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), Ryan's Daughter (1970), Young Winston (1972), Gandhi (1982), and When the Wind Blows (1986). Guinness played the part of Pip's roommate, Herbert Pocket. It's a lesser role by the actor's later standards, but he makes the most of it, without stealing the scenes. You can see Guinness in such films as Oliver Twist, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in a White Suit, The Ladykillers, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Lawrence of Arabia. He also once appeared in an obscure American film called Star Wars.

Dickens is all about great, three-dimensional characters, so there're plenty of opportunities for actors and actresses to shine in some of the secondary roles. Francis L. Sullivan is a strong physical presence as Jaggers, Valerie Hobson and Jean Simmons pair up nicely as the adult and child versions of Estella respectively, Bernard Miles is outstanding as Joe Gargery, Scottish actor Finlay Currie is very effective as Magwitch, and Martita Hunt is icily cold and wicked as Miss Havisham. Anthony Wager is quite good rendering Pip as a boy. There were several other worthy performances in smaller parts.

Bottom-Line: The Criterion DVD version of this film provides a beautiful digital transfer, though there were some noticeable vertical streaks during one portion. The original aspect ratio of 1.33:1 has been retained. The only disc extra is the original theatrical trailer. There's also a four-page cover booklet with an interesting essay by Adrian Turner (from which I drew a couple of points for this review). Optional English subtitles are provided for the hearing impaired. The running time is 118 minutes.

This film combines period atmosphere (sometimes gothic), with superlative sets, beautiful black-and-white photography, and larger-than-life characters superbly performed. It does full justice to the dramatic aspects of the novel. The film's only weakness is a failure to elucidate effectively the social themes of Dickens, but the rest is more than enough to carry the film. Although the consensus view among critics is that this film is a bit better than Lean's subsequent adaptation of Oliver Twist, I rate them as equal. I highly recommend both.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older