When 9-year-old orphan Oliver Twist dares to ask his cruel taskmaster, Mr. Bumble, for a second serving of gruel, he's hired out as an apprentice. Escaping that dismal fate, young Oliver falls in with the street urchin known as the Artful Dodger and his criminal mentor, Fagin. When kindly Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver in, Fagin's evil henchman Bill Sikes plots to kidnap the boy.
You only have to watch the opening few sequences of David Lean's striking adaptation of this, probably the most famous of Dickens' stories, to know that you are in for a treat. The dark clouds chase the poor, wretched, mother as she seeks any shelter she can from the impending storm and so, Oliver is born in the workhouse and the story begins. Francis L. Sullivan and Mary Clare are super as the exploitative and cruel face of the workhouse from which he is eventually sold and after a brief spell leading funeral cortèges for children, Oliver ends up befriending the Artful Dodger (Anthony Newley) and falling into truly bad company. Alec Guinness and Robert Newton epitomise evil and avarice, violence and brutality and are outstanding as Fagin and Skyes - and with Kay Walsh and Henry Stephenson (and also, a slightly under-rated Frederick Lloyd, too) you just could not leave the story in any better hands. A truly captivating film that belongs in anyone's library.
