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“A brilliant, fascinating movie, no less a classic than the Dickens novel which it brings to life” (Time Magazine). “From every angle this is a superb achievement” (Variety). Lean’s grim adaptation, which tells Dickens’ famous story of a young boy who falls into the clutches of a street gang of thieves, heightens the novel’s sense of despair and danger. Lean’s visual treatment and carefully constructed atmosphere of gloom and foreboding in Victorian England have been celebrated as “phantasmagoric” (Pauline Kael). Among the film’s standout scenes are Oliver’s birth and abandonment in the middle of a terrifying storm and Sikes’ dog’s desperate attempt to flee his homicidal master. Oliver Twist had a controversial history in the US; its American release was delayed by allegations that the depiction of Fagin (by Alec Guinness) was anti-Semitic, and the film played in America only after several minutes were excised from the original cut, three years after its UK release. “Lean’s masterly adaptation . . . set the standard for ensuing screen adaptations, responding to the demands of classical literature with the excitement, diversity and immediacy of cinematic language (Boris Trbic, senses of cinema).

Rated PG.