Oliver!

It's about five years ago now that I did a post on the 1948 British adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. As far as film adaptations go, however, the best known adaption is probably the musical version, Oliver!, which started on the stage before the rights to make a movie out of the musical were procured and the British did a movie version of the musical. That movie went on to win Oscar's Best Picture of 1968, meaning TCM could run it in 31 Days of Oscar and give me the chance to finally cross it off my list of well-known movies to watch.

The review that I wrote for the 1948 version is relatively close to the plot of the 1968 version, which is unsurprising considering the two movies are from the same source material. I do notice, however, that Bill Sikes (played in 1968 by Oliver Reed) was for some reason spelled "Sykes" in 1948. The 1968 musical opens with Twist already nine years old and in the workhouse orphanage, with the opening song "Food, Glorious Food" leading to the sequence where Oliver asks for a second helping of gruel.

This again gets Oliver sent to apprentice from an undertaker, and again to run away, leading him to London which is where he meets the Artful Dodger (Jack Wild) in a sequence that results in the other very well known song from the musical, "Consider Yourself". The Dodger is one of a whole bunch of children working as pickpockets for Fagin (Ron Moody, consciously trying not to give Fagin anything that might make him seem obviously Jewish in another big change from previous versions of the story). Fagin, for his part, works for the nasty Bill Sikes, who lives with girlfriend Nancy (Shani Wallis) who takes a liking to little Oliver.

Oliver goes out on his first job together with the Dodger and a third kid. The Dodger steals a wallet from Mr. Brownlow (Joseph O'Conor), but it's Oliver who's left holding the bag so to speak as the other two kids run away before Oliver and Oliver is the one hauled before court. But there were witnesses who saw it was a different kid who did the actual deed, so Oliver is sent to the custody of Mr. Brownlow. There's an obvious bit of foreshadowing here, as Brownlow has a portrait of his niece, a yound woman who looks surprisingly like little Oliver.

In another change from the 1948 version (and the original book), there's no Monks character who knows about the locket that had belonged to Oliver's mother who died in childhood. Instead, the locket remained in the possession of Mr. Bumble who ran the workhouse where Oliver lived the first nine years of his life. Also in this version, Sikes is smart enough to know that Olvier might possibly spill the beans about Fagin and his gang, and ultimately Sikes himself, if he stays with Mr. Brownlow long enough. This leads to Sikes and Nancy kidnapping Oliver and taking him back to Fagin, although Nancy has a change of heart that brings about the movie's climax and fairly sudden ending. There are a lot more songs, although to me none of them are as memorable as the first two I mentioned.

If you like musicals and you haven't seen Oliver! before, then do yourself a favor and watch it. From a technical point of view it's very well done. The acting from the adults, especially Moody as Fagin and Reed as Bill Sikes, is also good. Unsurprisingly, the kids are romanticized a bit. As for the musical numbers, they are exceptionally well choreographed, almost like clockwork, and won an honorary Oscar since choreography wasn't an official category. However, I'm one of those people who isn't the biggest fan of musicals and found the choreography here a bit too machine-like. For me it was similar in that way to Guys and Dolls: the scenes are very well constructed from a technical point of view, but left me rather cold. So if, like me, you're not the biggest fan of musicals, consider yourself (no pun intended) warned.