Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870), a well-known English novelist, journalist and short story writer, has had his work adapted and presented in various forms from the start of his career.
During the silent era of movie making about a hundred films based on his work were produced - not just in Britain and the USA but throughout Europe. The first that still exists - at half of its original six minutes - is Scrooge, Or Marley's Ghost, (https://youtu.be/O9Mk-B7MKP8?si=mtf7SBJRBiOQELU2) made by the stage magician Walter Booth at the north London studios of R.W. Paul. An epic production in 1901, it made use of special effects such as super-impositions and animated title cards. Even though the film itself was visually creative for the time it was made, the ghost always appears covered in bed sheets!
Feature-length Dickensian films began with David Copperfield in 1913, some scenes were filmed in the novel's own Kentish locations. It was directed by the 'Dickensian character actor' Thomas Bentley for producer Cecil Hepworth, Bentley made six silent Dickens adaptations, the most sumptuous of which must surely have been 1915's Barnaby Rudge, the biggest-budget British film of its day, now sadly missing.
The 1930s brought us the Hollywood studios films of David O. Selznick's productions of David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities (both US, 1935) thus proving that adaptations of literary classics could be box-office triumphs as well as prestige productions.
A cycle of British films coincided with a critical re-evaluation of Dickens the writer. Great Expectations (1946) in which the young Pip is surprised by the escaped convict Magwitch, shows the supreme confidence of its director, David Lean. Two years later Lean's Oliver Twist was an altogether darker proposition. Now widely considered the greatest of all Dickens films, on its release it was the subject of controversy, because of the depiction by Alex Guiness of Fagin. The fact that the character was modelled on the original illustrations caused the film to be banned for several years in the USA following accusation of it being anti-Semitic.
Many of Dicken's stories have since been transformed into musicals and further adaptations in animations with popular characters which have appeared on the big screen and on our televisions. These have bought Dickens stories to the attention of a young audience who would probably not want to struggle through the novel as it could be considered old fashioned and difficult to understand, it is hoped that by appreciating the story, as they grow, they might develop an interest in the original novel (assuming that their vocabulary and comprehension is up to it); and they may also have an opportunity to see some of the classic feature films.
Two of the most popular stories to be made into a wide variety of films are Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, which can now be found with a wide variety of titles and from a range of different viewpoints and characters that young children relate to such as Donald Duck in Bah, Hamduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas. These may, in many ways stray from the original story line but they make interesting viewing for a young audience! Dickens visual writing styles and intricate plots are easily dramatized and very effective on the big screen, and frequently, we may be able to talk about the characters and the plot of a film without knowing that it was originally taken from a 19th century novel!
How many of us would attribute the following quote to Charles Dickens, without having seen the movie?
'It is a far, far, better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far, better rest that I go to, than I have ever known' (A Tale of Two Cities, 1859)
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