Rent Great Expectations (1946)

Wonderful Dickens Adaptation - Great Expectations review by GI

David Lean's fantastic version of the Dickens classic. A wonderful story and a remarkable depiction of Dickensian Victorian England. At its heart this is a romance, a story of deep passion but also a film about family, friendship and the danger of ambition and materialism. It's a wonderful story from a great English novel and though it's been filmed numerous times for cinema and TV this remains the best adaptation. With it's use of chiaroscuro lighting especially to simulate the imagination of a frightened child and with a fantastic cast of British actors this is still a real treat and perfectly captures a vision of England of the 1830s. John Mills plays the young orphan, Pip, who is apprenticed to the blacksmith and husband (Bernard Miles) of his elder sister. As a child he had, out of fear, assisted an escaped convict and later was sent to the dark and mysterious house of the eccentric Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt) to play with her ward Estella (Jean Simmons). As he comes of age he learns that a secret benefactor has decided to make him a gentlemen and in London he meets the now beautiful and adult Estella (Valerie Hobson) and falls for her although she has been groomed to deceive men. The film captures the class divisions on which English society has culturally been built, one of snobbery and privilege. Lean went onto make a second Dickens adaptation, Oliver Twist, in 1948 and showed that he had a magic eye for detail and structure. This is a superb film from when the British had a film industry in which to be proud.

Classic Dickens. - Great Expectations review by Steve

My choice as the best British film adaptation of a story by Charles Dickens. The long novel is freely cut down to under two hours of screen time with some skill while retaining a strong flavour of the dialogue. Young Pip's (Tony Wager) confrontation with Magwitch (Finlay Currie) on an expressionist Kent marshes is one of the great opening scenes in cinema.

And this quality is sustained through Pip's encounters with Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt) and young Estella (Jean Simmons) in the old gothic house. But, after 35 minutes, John Mills takes over as the older Pip and some intensity is lost. Maybe because such excellence is hard to maintain, but also as Mills is miscast.

He's 20 years too old, and is far too rigid to capture any sense of being haunted by the ghosts of childhood. But Dickens always provides plenty of scope for the character roles. My pick is Finlay Currie, but the support cast is uniformly phenomenal. The film won well deserved Oscars for b&w cinematography and art direction.

The Victorian society presented is brutal. To survive and be happy is good fortune. The class system is a conveyance for cruelty and a justification for unwarranted pride. There is nothing at all to arrest the misery of the unfortunate. Surely this delivered a jolt to a country then inventing the welfare state? This is brilliant Dickens, but in 1946, it was also a lesson from history.