David Lean makes Dickens frightening and funny, with a child’s vulnerability kept firmly in view. The adult romance is less persuasive, but the supporting performances and the oppressive settings make this an easy recommendation.
David Lean’s Great Expectations is a fine Dickens adaptation, and the childhood scenes are the reason to choose it. Lean understands how frightening adult behaviour can look before a child has the means to explain it. The period setting never becomes an excuse to make everyone seem quaint. There is cruelty here, as well as comedy, and the film gives both room to trouble Pip. The adult romance is less convincing, but it does not undo the early work.
We were frightened by the opening graveyard scene. What got to us was the child’s vulnerability in a place that already seems hostile, before we have had time to settle into watching a literary adaptation. Tony Wager’s young Pip makes fear look immediate and unpractised; nothing about his distress seems calculated to win our sympathy. Guy Green’s black-and-white photography makes the graveyard feel cold and exposed, with little comfort in being able to see so much of it.
Miss Havisham’s mansion is equally unsettling, though John Bryan’s production design offers plenty to look at. The rooms feel occupied by someone who has no intention of making a visitor comfortable. Martita Hunt’s Miss Havisham belongs in them so completely that the surroundings do not distract from her. That matters in a film with so much period detail: we keep watching the person. Hunt makes this strange household feel like somewhere a person might actually live, unhappily.
Jean Simmons gives the young Estella an assurance that makes Pip’s uncertainty more painful to watch. Their childhood scenes have an awkwardness that the adult pairing cannot quite recover. John Mills remains an engaging Pip, but Valerie Hobson’s Estella is harder to understand, and the romance asks for feelings the performances do not fully supply. Walter Goehr’s music gives it a warmth that the playing does not always earn. This is the film’s substantial weakness.
The supporting players help keep that weakness from taking over. Alec Guinness makes Herbert Pocket welcome company, bringing a lightness that matters in a story so crowded with disapproval. Bernard Miles gives Joe Gargery a directness we can believe in, while Francis L. Sullivan’s Mr Jaggers has the firmness to hold our attention without demanding our affection. We need these differences between people, especially when the central couple grow less absorbing. The cast rarely feels like a procession of literary names.
Lean cuts down the novel without making it hard to follow, and Jack Harris’s editing keeps a crowded story moving cleanly. We have enough time with young Pip to register how each encounter affects him. There is pleasure in the briskness, particularly when a supporting player can establish a character without a long introduction. The cost is some emotional haste once the children have grown up, though the film’s 118 minutes never feel dutiful.
For all the attention paid to period detail, Lean keeps the question of class close to Pip himself. We found it painful to watch a child learning to measure his worth through other people’s judgements; that gives the film a force its romance cannot quite match. We would recommend it warmly to anyone wary of respectable literary adaptations, with a reservation about the adult leads. Give the graveyard your full attention.
