"Oliver!" (1968)

because it's over-rated tripe?

Pauline Kael loved it. And she hated big Hollywood films.(I know it was filmed in England.)

I always cry when Nancy dies.

OP, shouldn't your question be "Where Is Love?"

I love "Oliver!" It's got several terrific songs. The cast is impeccable, especially Oliver Reed and Ron Moody. It's big but not overblown, like say, "Hello, Dolly" and "Scrooge."

I loved it when it came out. As a child I thought its two big production numbers were fantastic. I'll still watch it but mainly for Ron Moody's Fagin and Oliver Reed as Bill Sikes -- possibly the most terrifying villain of ANY screen musical (I used to wonder why he never got a song, but that would have made him less scary, I imagine).

I love it. It's such a classic well made film and every individual element is absolutely first rate. The only shortcoming is that Shani what's her name, a dipsy blonde who tries hard but is not up to the role off Nancy in these surroundings. Such a shame that Georgia Brown, who created the part onstage in both London and New York, was just too old by the time the film was made.

Moving "Oom-Pah-Pah" until later in the story, so Nancy can use it to cover for stealing Oliver from Sikes, is a masterstroke. In the stage show, it's a simple Act II curtain raiser with no dramatic context.

[quote]I used to wonder why he [Sikes] never got a song, but that would have made him less scary, I imagine.

He has a song in the stage version, My Name, but it's lousy and was one of the few dropped from the film.

The set design is amazing, especially in the slum areas, and the supporting players are all great, but the kid who plays Oliver ruins the movie for me.

Scrooge with Albert Finney was able to be made because the producers saved a tremendous amount of money by reusing the sets from Oliver!, which were still standing.

Too gray.

Strong men tremble when they hear it!

They've got cause enough to fear it!

It's much blacker than they smear it!

Nobody mentions...

My name!

Rich men hold their five-pound notes out --

Saves me emptying their coats out.

They know I could tear their throats out

Just to live up to...

My name!

Danny Sewell played Bill Sikes in both the original London and Broadway productions. It was his first acting job. He had previously been a professional heavyweight boxer.

Australian actor Barry Humphries played Mr. Sowerberry, the undertaker, in the original London production. He later became famous as Dame Edna Everage.

"Oom-Pah-Pah" ranks pretty high on the earworm scale.

Because Annie! is better.

When "Annie" opened on Broadway, we used to it "Oliver in Drag."

^ we used to CALL it

John Simon also liked the film as well and he was a tough critic. And I liked it when I saw it as a kid. It was a change of pace for the esteemed director of The Third Man, Outcast of the Islands, The Fallen Idol and Odd Man Out, Carol Reed. The G-rated Oliver seemed old-fashion in a year that produced Faces, Rosemary's Baby, 2001, Petulia, Planet of the Apes and Bullitt none of which were nominated for Best Picture. Oliver is certainly more entertaining than Funny Girl which WAS a Best Picture nominee that year.

I saw it in the cinema when I was a kid though it must have been at a revival. Can't remember why but maybe it was a school outing since it is based on Oliver Twist. Our school took us to a lot of movies.

I’ll take any and all opportunities to remember Davy Jones.

Here in his Tony nominated role as The Artful Dodger.

Wonderful movie musical- love it. As a kid in NYC my Mom said one day (taking us to a matinee) , would you like to see Funny Girl or Oliver. I chose Oliver- it was about a year later that this little mo realized the magnitude of Streisand’s talent after a viewing on Ed Sullivan, lol. The movie Oliver is better than Funny Girl, but it’s star was and is a talent for the ages.

Surprised Fagin hasn't made this musical cancelled.

Most people living today never heard of it. I was eight years old when it came out in 1968. Afterward, my parents used it to remind me how good I had it.

Mark Lester, "Oliver", here:

I left at the point where Oliver Reed beats Nancy up, the she goes out and sings Whenever He Needs Me.

NO, just, no.

It’s too poor, gray and grimy. People want good times, romance and razzle dazzle in a film musical. West Side Story was about poor people too, but they were hot young men and women in colorful outfits. Not many people want to look at a bunch of boys and old men in brown rags.

Oliver Reed was hot in this movie.

“Who Will Buy” is gorgeous- (ripe strawberries ripe)- in song and cinematography. And the story is compelling. Only Brandon DeWild was a more gorgeous kid than Marl Lester.

Then she goes out and sings Whenever He Needs Me.

Usually sung by a fuck buddy.

[quote]Pauline Kael loved it. And she hated big Hollywood films.(I know it was filmed in England.)

Then why mention the word Hollywood?

R20, his pitch was just spot-on in that, wasn't it? Davy Jones was always a nasal singer, but so talented, and that nasal voice probably worked great for live theater.

There were lots of musicals coming out of England in the late 60s

Chitty, this thing, Mr. Chips, STAR...Chitty is the most beloved, but not by the gays.

[quote] STAR...Chitty is the most beloved

'Chitty' may have been loved by children but no one loved that bizarre mutant mistake called 'Star'.

[quote]There were lots of musicals coming out of England in the late 60s Chitty, this thing, Mr. Chips, STAR...

And "Oh, What A Lovely War".

Did anyone round here see that?

[quote] "Oh, What A Lovely War".

A particularly odd heavy-handed cabaret inspired by Bertolt Brecht. We only saw it because of the stars' brief appearances.

Shani was one of those singing English Broadway tootsies after Julie, r7. She got Oliver and Sally Ann got Chitty. Of course there's also Petula in Finian's and Chips.

[quote] tootsie

She soon returned to obscurity.

And of course, Shani is FOLLIES adjacent...

[quote]John Simon also liked the film as well and he was a tough critic

John Simon also liked the film as well and he was an INSANE critic

I remember us all giggling at Shani’s heaving bazooms during her big number.

[quote]Surprised Fagin hasn't made this musical cancelled.

Ancient, anti-Jewish bigotry and stereotypes are perfectly acceptable. Which is why Oliver is neither cancelled nor a Viewer Warning appended.

Because it was released by a Hollywood studio R29! As in Columbia Pictures!

The kids couldn't sing and got fucked up.

Mark Lester's dubbing is the worst I've heard and that is saying something. And from the great Johnny Green of all people.

Ron Moody, treading a thin line - knocks it out of the park - by making Fagan a clown, rather than a stereotype. Superb acting.

There's nothing clownish and most certainly nothing funny about the use centuries' old stereotypical dress and mannerisms of ghetto Jews. Both Dickens and Reed were well aware of the culturally-entrenched bigotries of their audiences.

I always sensed there was something pervy between the Artful Dodger & Fagin and they weren't just "grooming" Oliver to be a thief

Oliver, Oliver!

We’d all be better off watching the David Lean version.

The David Lean version is stronger, and much more truthful to the original.

And Alec Guinness gives a real lesson in acting especially when he's listening. He hints at a secret life between him and Sikes.

"Please sir - can I have some whore?"

I had such a mad crush on Oliver (Mark Lester). I believe, had I been old enough to pop a boner, I probably would have masturbated to his image!

When I was 11 years in the early 80s, I was out sick from school for a few days, so I just sat in front of the TV watching HBO and The Movie Channel -- that week, I saw Doctor Zhivago and Oliver! for the first time and they both changed my life, kick-starting my love of both classic film and history. I've since gotten to see both films on the big screen several times and they still enchant me.

By the way, it's "Please, sir, I want some more!"

Onna White got a special Oscar for her choreography. I still think her work in “The Music Man” film is the best

^ also Bye, Bye Birdie (1963)

I don't think anyone with any modern sensibility would find Fagin in the musical film to be a Jewish stereotype. Dickens absolutely drew from stereotypes of the day. He even calls Fagin "The Jew" in the novel. But in Lionel Bart's Oliver, outside of the clarinet solos in Fagin's song, presents nothing offensive to a regular viewer.

[quote]But in Lionel Bart's Oliver, outside of the clarinet solos in Fagin's song, presents nothing offensive to a regular viewer.

R56 reiterates R40's point; that anti-Jewish stereotypes and their continued propagation are so culturally inculcated as to be deemed "non-offensive" and acceptable.

[quote] Dickens calls Fagin "The Jew"

I call Lionel Bart a Jew.

R58 One of R56's "regular viewers".

WHET the child actors? They were all so good.

[quote]WHET the child actors? They were all so good.

Jack Wild, the Artful Dodger, went on to star in TV's "H.R. Pufnstuf." He later battled alcoholism and died at age 54 of oral cancer, which caused him to lose his ability to speak for the last couple of years of his life.

R58 Lionel Bart was a genius songwriter.

There are eight excellent, tuneful songs in this show. And Wiki claims Bart could not read or write music.

Dick Van Dyke was considered to play Fagin. no doubt after his layered nuanced performance in Mary Poppins.

Isn't Mark Lester supposedly the biological father of Michael Jackson's oldest son?

Thanks r61. That's tragic about Jack Wild.

Because you have Shani Wallis looking like a Dallas Cheerleader rather than a drug addicted prostitute. This is Dickens not Anne of Green Gables.

You needed a prostitute that men would actually want to sleep with. You would need a paper bag over your head.

Georgia Brown looked more like a prostitute. A dish-rag of a prostitute.

R58 You are mistaken!

His name was Lionel Begleiter.

R58's link eventually took me to Bart's musical Blitz! This made me laugh out loud:

Sean Kenny designed the elaborate sets, which included representations of Victoria Station, Petticoat Lane, and the Bank underground station, not to mention London on fire during an air raid. Four revolving house units and an enormous, mobile bridge, carried on two shifting towers, made it, at the time, the most expensive West End musical ever produced. Noël Coward called it "twice as loud and twice as long as the real thing."

R70 The sad thing is that Lionel Begleiter hit the jackpot with Oliver Twist but all his other shows failed.

I can tell you what's wrong with Oliver!

It's too fun, too jolly, all color and dance and melody, and cheery-o. The story itself is the darkest tale of conditions for children in merry-old-England, where you have to choose between eating, or molestation and death.

The David Lean movie of Oliver Twist is far, far superior, and it has a superior villain too. It is terrifying, which is how it should be.

What about Fagin in the musical film is offensive?

The character in the book is Jewish, r73, characterized by stereotypes. I don't think the musical mentions it at all.

R72 I agree wholeheartedly! This 1968 movie is as sanitised as those inane Walt Disney movies.

R73 Some people are DETERMINED to be offended. The 1968 Disney-Fagin has been whitewashed to appease the perpetually-offended.

[quote] The character in the book is Jewish … characterized by stereotypes.

Can you explain to us what exactly are those 'stereotypes' which Charles Dickens used?

Fagin has been the subject of much debate over antisemitism, during Dickens' lifetime and in modern times. In an introduction to a 1981 Bantam Books reissue of Oliver Twist, for example, Irving Howe wrote that Fagin was considered an "archetypical Jewish villain."[6] The first 38 chapters of the book refer to Fagin by his racial and religious origin 257 times, calling him "the Jew", against 42 uses of "Fagin" or "the old man". Dickens, who had extensive knowledge of London street life, wrote that he had made Fagin Jewish because: "it unfortunately was true, of the time to which the story refers, that the class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew".[7] It is often argued that Fagin was based on a specific Jewish criminal of the era, Ikey Solomon.[8] Dickens also claimed that by calling Fagin "the Jew" he had meant no imputation against the Jewish people: "I have no feeling towards the Jews but a friendly one. I always speak well of them, whether in public or private, and bear my testimony (as I ought to do) to their perfect good faith in such transactions as I have ever had with them..."[9]

In later editions of the book, printed during his lifetime, Dickens excised over 180 instances of 'Jew' from the text.[10] This occurred after Dickens sold his London home in 1860 to a Jewish banker, James Davis, who objected to the emphasis on Fagin's Jewishness in the novel. When he sold the house, Dickens allegedly told a friend: "The purchaser of Tavistock House will be a Jew Money-Lender."

Dickens became friends with Davis' wife Eliza, who told him in a letter in 1863, that Jews regarded his portrayal of Fagin a "great wrong" to their people. Dickens then started to revise Oliver Twist, removing all mention of "the Jew" from the last 15 chapters; and later wrote in reply: "There is nothing but good will left between me and a People for whom I have a real regard and to whom I would not willfully have given an offence". In one of his final public readings in 1869, a year before his death, Dickens cleansed Fagin of all stereotypical caricature. A contemporary report observed: "There is no nasal intonation; a bent back but no shoulder-shrug: the conventional attributes are omitted."[11][9]

In 1865, in Our Mutual Friend, Dickens created a number of Jewish characters, the most important being Mr. Riah, an elderly Jew who finds jobs for downcast young women in Jewish-owned factories. One of the two heroines, Lizzie Hexam, defends her Jewish employers: "The gentleman certainly is a Jew, and the lady, his wife, is a Jewess, and I was brought to their notice by a Jew. But I think there cannot be kinder people in the world."[9]

The comic book creator Will Eisner, disturbed by the antisemitism in the typical depiction of the character, created a graphic novel in 2003 titled Fagin the Jew. In this book, the back story of the character and events of Oliver Twist are depicted from his point of view.

^ Wasn't there anything in this movie for you to be offended over?

The Lean film was very controversial in its depiction of Fagin. I don't recall the musical having any controversy over that character.

[quote]"it unfortunately was true, of the time to which the story refers, that the class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew".

Dickens justifying Jew hatred, and in his justification, continuing to propagate it. As is amply illustrated in the link at R77. Dickens heaped every culturally-inculcated negative stereotype about Jews into his characterization of Fagin. The illustration would do Der Sturmer proud.

That Dickens "discovered a moment of sympathy for Jews" in Mr. Riah does not change on iota the ancient depiction of Jews as the reviled "Other", a revulsion so entrenched as to be not only acceptable, but protected and defended. As Dickens did. And posters like R76 will be continue to be confounded by the concept that depicting Jews as thieves, misers and outlaws is not the natural order of the world.

Without historical background, an explanation as to the reasons for Fagin's depiction, or Shylock's depiction, via appended Warnings, then the socio-cultural propagation of anti-Jewish bigotry/hatred will continue. Considering just how inculcated it is, I'm not holding m breath for any righting of this ancient wrong.

R61 and he was a chain smoker from an early age.

R81 Sinful.

R80 More Sinful.

If Julie Andrews had played Nancy we would have never questioned her as a prostitute. After all, Eliza Doolittle was meant to be trash too, no?

R63 to say nothing of SHITTY SHITTY BANG BANG

No one says this, but Ebenezer Scrooge was Jewish too, along with his partner Jacob Marley.

R85 The perpetually-offended need to do their homework.

I’m not offended, but I think its an interesting way to look at it.

I had just started to notice boys when this movie came out. I was 13 or 14. I had such a crush on Jack Wild. I remember thinking many of the boys were cute. I kept thinking, I wouldn't mind being in Fagan's gang.

R61/R65 Jack Wild was rather a decent little actor.

His other Dickensian turn, as Charley in Hexam in OUR MUTUAL FRIEND (1976) is very well done.

Yes i mean multiple Oscar nominations including best film and a genius Oliver Reed. And played on telly loads. Yes very under rated.

[quote] in Lionel Bart's Oliver, outside of the clarinet solos in Fagin's song, presents nothing offensive

R56 sorry, please explain—what about these solos is offensive? And isn’t the part about which you’re speaking played by an oboe, anyway?

As a Jewish person, I don’t find it offensive but do recognize there are elements in Fagin’s music which are callbacks to klezmer music and are meant to elicit Hebraic musical thoughts. I personally find it delightful and charming.

Bart would have been very sensitive to accusations that his Fagin was stereotypically jewish. What should he have done made him an Italian?

[quote]I had just started to notice boys when this movie came out. I was 13 or 14. I had such a crush on Jack Wild. I remember thinking many of the boys were cute. I kept thinking, I wouldn't mind being in Fagan's gang.

Exactly my reaction to the Seabees in South Pacific.

R56

Trigger warning: this music contains the offensive clarinet.

I must be an idiot. I never read the book but have seen the movie a few times. I always wondered what kind of a name "Fagin" was supposed to be, and my dumb guess was Irish. The crafty, hook-nosed Jewish villain stereotype went right by me. I think that at the time I was a kid, that stereotype was so soaked into the culture that it had come to signify just one of a few subtypes of movie villains, and many people never knew that it originated in anti-Semitism.

Charles Dickens used name Fagin because he actually worked with someone in a boot black shop as a young boy.

Early drawings/illustrations of Fagin encompassed all the negative facial and other traits Victorians assigned to Jews.

Personal favourite version of Oliver Twist is the 1999 BBC television version.

'negative facial and other traits'

R98 Why is it your Personal favourite?

R98 is that the maligned and now-cancelled Polanski version?

Though one is not in favor of current trend for British productions of classic literature going all "inclusion" or otherwise rewriting things, this 1999 Oliver Twist at least tried to show Monks in a more humane light.

Yes, he escapes being hanged (unlike Fagin), but we see he was exiled to the Caribbean colonies where Monks not only prospers, but takes himself a coloured wife who is now heavily pregnant with his child.

Michael Kitchen (as Mr. Brownlow) explains to young Oliver why there are two different outcomes for Fagin and Monks though both committed same crimes. It was all a bit of Victorian hypocrisy, but there you are.

I though the Polanski was OK. It had Sir Ben Kingsley portraying The Jew.

[quote] why there are two different outcomes for Fagin and Monks though both committed same crimes

Did Dickens write that? Or some BBC employee?

Oliver the musical has been performed often enough, but more as school or other venues of late rather than Broadway or London productions.

DL fave Patti Lupone did 1983 Broadway revival which was not a resounding success.

Huge issue with doing musical Oliver on Broadway or elsewhere in US are all those young children (boys).

Strict child labor laws and regulations makes each of those young boy actors very expensive. Requirements for film, stage and other productions to have a qualified professional Registered Nurse on location (in ratio per number of her/his charges) is a huge expense.

[quote] I had just started to notice boys when this movie came out. I was 13 or 14. I had such a crush on Jack Wild. I remember thinking many of the boys were cute. I kept thinking, I wouldn't mind being in Fagan's gang.

[quote] Exactly my reaction to the Seabees in South Pacific.

Mine was the Aggies in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

R100 see R102 for my response.

Also really liked Michael Kitchen's interpretation of Mr. Brownlow.

Kiera really wears period dress in an eye-catching way, doesn’t she?

R104

First must issue a correction; ITV did 1999 television production of Oliver Twist, not BBC.

Next in answer to your query as with so much else coming out of both BBC and ITV for past few decades, adaption heavily changed many bits. You see this also in things like recent Miss. Marple adaptations where characters are made into lesbians and other things done in name of "inclusion" and "equality'.

"The adaptation, by Alan Bleasdale, attracted controversy, particularly for the decision to begin with two hours of backstory (much of it invented by Bleasdale) before reaching the plot of the novel. Furthermore, Bleasdale altered well-known sections of the novel, so that although the basic idea is the same, almost every detail is changed enough so that the drama plays like an original story, not an adaptation. Monks, who is made an out-and-out murderer in this serial (he kills his father), is nevertheless changed from a completely irredeemable and evil villain to someone who reforms to the point of getting married and starting a family"

Sorry, wrong link for R109

See below for proper...

Sophie Okonedo was a great Nancy in the 2007 version.

[quote] Sophie Okonedo was a great Nancy in the 2007 version.

Was she murdered under London Bridge?

Of course we have to have a Patti Lupone clip!

Bootleg.....

NYT was very unkind.....

How bad was it?

That 1984 Oliver! revival opened 29 April, and closed two weeks later on 13 May...

I used to love to put on my dad's raincoat and swish the skirts singing OM PAH PAH.

I love the movie "Oliver".

Also, without it we would not have "Every Sperm is Sacred" which was definitely influenced by it.

[quote] "Every Sperm is Sacred" which was definitely influenced by it.

Yes!

It's definitely mocking the American song and dance routines.

Impoverished orphans doing jolly vaudeville routines killed Dickens' intentions.

This person (who looks like drag queen) has an uncredited role in this movie.

[quote] American song and dance routines

This supposedly English movie is full of American showbiz types.

All the Disney-type dancing was done by old showgirl Onna White and the music was all done by the 62 year old American man who did more Hollywood stuff than anyone else.

It's like Columbia Pictures didn't trust the British staff.

R83 This person agrees with you.

Most of Julie's movies were bad but I thought she did OK in that drama called "Duet for One".

Julie Andrews was in the German release?

I assumed Mr Riah in Our Mutual Friend was Dickens repenting Fagin and trying to make amends. You need to understand that Oliver Twist is one of his earliest works and Our Mutual Friend is his last completed novel.

The action in Our Mutual Friend shows a snobby English parvenu of the type who always live beyond their means and don't pay their tradesmen, using Mr Riah as a front for their own inadequacies and blaming their own penny-pinching and double-crossing on his Jewishness, which is pretty much an expose of the reality of the social system. Mr Riah himself is a really lovely man. Our Mutual Friend is a very subversive book. All of its heroes are poor people, some of whom come into money at various stages of the book and some who don't, and its villain is London Society, represented by Mr Veneering, M.P. and his hangers-on.

[quote] Our Mutual Friend is a very subversive book.

Do you think the Dataloungers would benefit from actually reading such a book? Is it long?

Trigger warning, R56, R91

This monologue includes many instances of the offensive clarinet and oboe.

Over 900 pages, R125.

Lionel Bart was very gay and messed up his life.

His major collaborator said he had an enormous nose at 5.00

Mark Steyn describes Lionel Bart’s Melisma at 20.00

Mark Lester appears at 21.00

Lionel Bart says the choreography for the movie 'Oliver' was too similar to MGM's 'Easter Parade' with Judy Garland.

The choreography for Easter Parade and Oliver! are completely different.

Lionel Bart said it was very much like MGM's 'Easter Parade'. See R129.

The American who arranged the music for 'Oliver!' arranged the music for MGM's "Easter Parade". See R121.

But Johnny Green had nothing to do with the choreography just as he had nothing to do with the choreography of West Side Story.

[quote] had nothing to do

You obviously didn't see all the video at R128 about the composer who become an instant millionaire and destroyed their career with drugs.

I guess he's talking about the brassiness of an MGM orchestration. But that doesn't have anything to do with the choreography.

[quote] Fagin was based on a specific Jewish criminal of the era, Ikey Solomon

Solomon had a remarkable visage

If you get Movies! TV, they're showing Oliver! Saturday night at 8pm Eastern Time.

This treacley tat robbed Peter O’Toole of his long-overdue Best Actor Oscar and the Best Picture Oscar (for THE LION IN WINTER).

As Geoffrey II told Eleanor Of Acquitaine—“Rot.”

[quote] treacley tat

How amusing!

Lorenz Hart and Lionel Bart.

Both Jewish.

Both Homosexual.

Both Songwriters

Both Alcoholics

That's amazing that he was so wasteful and desperate for cash he sold off the rights to Oliver! denying himself much needed income in the long run.

That video at R128 shows his life turned into a complete car crash in the late 60s.

Gosh homes in London, New York and Malibu. How dumb.

For some mad reason, it’s a perennial Xmas family classic in certain parts of England. They always stick it on telly in the week before or after Xmas day—dunno why, as it’s actually quite bleak and not terribly festive outside of the big songs.

"It's a Wonderful Life" is pretty bleak and not terribly festive, outside of the unconvincing happy ending.

[quote] 'It's a Wonderful Life" is pretty bleak

'It's a Fine Life' is also rather bleak

"It's a fine life. If you don't mind having to go without things.

Though diseased rats threaten to bring the plague in. It's a fine life!

Though you sometimes do come by The occasional black eye You can always cover one 'Til he blacks the other one It's a fine life!"

Oliver! is starting right now on Movies! TV (Sat., Dec. 11, 8pm)

"It's A Fine Life" is still jolly.

I wouldn't be surprised if some DL queens had "Boy for sale" as their ringtone...

^ I'm no pervert but I have to admit that that 'Oliver' was very pretty at the time.

Much prettier than the fat-faced, annoying brat in Sir Carol Reed's previous child-centric movie—

R7, Georgia Brown and Shani Wallis were born in the same year. Did Georgia Brown just look too old and washed up compared to Shani Wallis?

R43, it was KATHE GREEN who provided the singing voice for Mark Lester, not Johnny Green.

R149 Is Kathe Green Johnny Green's daughter or granddaughter?

As a matter of fact, she is, R150.

I don't know if DL is familiar with R&B singer Jazmine Sullivan - she writes for a lot of big names and just tied Bjork as the artist with the most Grammy nominations without winning (15). But I always loved this footage of her doing 'He Needs Me' at 14 years old in a middle school production. The reprise of the song especially (at the 3:55 mark) is really emotive, and any soulful runs are added in with subtlety and bring some more pathos to the performance.

One of the worst wigs ever, and the accent is as forced as it usually is in American productions of Oliver, but *incredible* vocal power at 14.

Lester became a very handsome man.

The Fallen Idol is a great film and a must see classic. The kid gives a wonderful performance.

[quote] The Fallen Idol is a great film

It's a very well-made film according to this over-long interview with someone I've never heard of.

[quote] with someone I've never heard of.

If you’ve never heard of Richard Aoyade then you must not know follow British entertainment.

^ Is that entertaining?

[quote] ^ Is that entertaining?

Enough that they brought him over to the US to be in the American version.

The gay episode from the original British IT Crowd is one of the funniest episodes I've ever seen.

Sonia Dresdel and the beautiful Michèle Morgan add some flavor to "The Fallen Idol".

Michèle Morgan is billed as beautiful. And Sonia Dresdel looks the stereotypical villainess.

And yet I feel they are physiognomically similar with their pronounced cheekbones, nose and jaws.

I'm sure clever Carol Reed was psychologically aware of their similarity when casting them.

[quote] The Fallen Idol is a great film and a must see classic. The kid gives a wonderful performance.

It's a well-made movie from one of Britain's top five movie directors. It features a wonderful staircase by Vincent Korda set over 4 floors.

My complaint is that Carol Reed tries to get inside the brain of the child and the whole story is told via the perception of that child and — frankly— that child gets tedious over 95 minutes.

I am in my 50s and don't think I ever heard of clarinet being anti-Semetic until this thread.

[quote] clarinet being anti-Semetic

Streep was furious when Pollock allowed this clarinet music in her film

R143 ditto A Christmas Carol

Judy sings As Long As He Needs Me. Without the accent.

She would have used the accent if she had done the film. And she would have finally got her Oscar. Nancy doesn't haven't to be young. Aging and haggard is ok.

R166, I think Nancy is supposed to be in her late teens or early 20s. She says she’s been working for Fagin for 12 years since she was half of Oliver’s age.

I bet Judy was pissed Mort Lindsay used first that violin and then the chorus at the end. Nobody gets between me and my audience!

I've had sufficient.

Did you know Mort Lindsay's daughter, Bonney, (named for William Bonney, a famous ancestor better known as Billy The Kid), was married to Burt Ward?

Is this the Georgia Brown who originated the role onstage?

I don't know what the date of the photo is, late sixties by the hairdo, and if this is the right woman then maybe they just thought her features were too strong or that she wasn't photogenic. Maybe that was right, I should think that Nancy needs to look quite vulnerable and fragile, someone Bill could kill with the flick of a wrist. And this gal has a look of determination about her.

This gal has a look of determination but Bill Sikes also has a look of determination.

And he strangles her to death.

I dislike the film, and blame the production design. I love the music, the performances are excellent, and they tried hard to make the lowest end of Victorian London look filthy and hopeless... but somehow, they made it look twee!

I still can't pinpoint how, everything on camera is discolored and distressed, but it all looks fake. Certainly the godawful hair and makeup are a big part of the problem, but that's not all. Somehow it all looks fake and too colorful, were they guilty of flashing too many colored lights around like they did in the "West Side Story" movie? I can't put my finger on it, but it just doesn't look right.

[quote] but it just doesn't look right.

I agree, R173. It doesn't look right because it looks like a colorised version of the David Lean film.

And Columbia Pictures employed Carol Reed to direct it because Columbia thought he was cheaper version of David Lean.

David Lean was working on Ryan's Daughter. It took him years to do a film. He should have done a musical but it probably would have taken him 10 years. He would have made a better Cabaret than Fosse. We would have gotten the entire Weimer republic as it changed over to the Nazi. An epic musical at 4 hours with intermission. And we would have gotten all those good songs that foolish Fosse cut.

I doubt David Lean would do a remake of his own film.

And yet it seems he was toying with the idea of remaking 'Mutiny On The Bounty' in the 1970s which Carol Reed had already remade in 1961 (before crazy Brando sacked Carol Reed).

(Though I think David Lean was floundering in the 1970s)

R172, no, he beat her to death. He killed her with blunt force trauma.

As a 6-year old gayby, I distinctly remember going to see it on the big screen with my family (in 1968) and absolutely CRUSHING on the Artful Dodger. I would fantasize about running away and being under the protective wing of a boy like that. I wanted to sleep in the same bed as him.

[quote] I wanted to sleep in the same bed as him

You've matured since then. And so has he—

Lean was so devastated by the reviews of Ryan's Daughter he didn't make a film for 10 years. It helped that he had made a fortune from Dr. Zhivago so he didn't need to. Though nobody in the 70s really wanted his kind of films in any case except for me. Seeing the restoration of Lawrence of Arabia was like breathing pure oxygen after many years of thick smog.

Lawrence of Arabia leaves me cold. I have seen it twice on the big screen (after restoration) and while I readily acknowledge that it's a visually gorgeous film, I find too emotionally distant to become involved with the story or characters.

It is not a warm and fuzzy film that's for sure but I found it very emotionally compelling and the kind of epic filmmaking which had started in the teens and that was dead as a doornail by the end of the 60s. Though I guess people would say a new kind of epic filmmaking began with The Godfather films and Star Wars.

[quote] emotionally distant

I've seen Lawrence 20 times. I adore David Lean's craftsmanship, the profound script and the fabulous soundtrack.

But I hate Peter O'Toole and I think the problem is that the main character is a paradoxical, quixotic, crazy enigma and we can never be sure what's happening in his head.

That's why the original poster presented Lawrence as an emotionally distant, unknowable character.

Noel(who was friends with Lawrence) said if he had looked like Peter O'Toole the Arabs would have never let him go.

[quote] Noel (who was friends with Lawrence)

They had lunch and exchanged letters in 1930-31.

Brando was offered Lawrence first but turned it down. Eventually it looked like it would be Albert Finney in the wake of his Tom Jones success. Producer Sam Spiegel made a series of screen tests with him that cost over a hundred thousand of 1960s dollars. But Lean hated his performance and working with him on the tests. Then Finney dropped out when Spiegel told Finney the part was his if he signed a seven year personal contract. Finney wasn't having it.

Things were at an impasse with shooting due to begin when someone mentioned seeing O'Toole in a stage show and suggested testing him.

R147 all joking aside, I think Sir Harry Secombe’s vocal performance is the best in the entire film.

Truly a lovely and poignant tenor, with power enough to cut through the chill of the surrounding and unlock the sweet sadness in the melody without any resort to pathos or sentimentality, and convey exactly the subtle inner workings of the character and the situation.

His held notes still astonish. And there’s something so chilling and yet at the same time so moving about his delivery of “going...going...go-ooone....”.

I'd love to know more about Finney doing those expensive screen tests for 'Lawrence'.

The people on that Britmovie website said Finney was filming in Spain with bleached blond hair before the change of decision.

I know O'Toole mentioned it in his memoir but I don't trust the honesty of an alcoholic.

[quote] Eventually it looked like it would be Albert Finney in the wake of his Tom Jones success.

'Lawrence' in 1962 came before 'Tom Jones' in 1963. But Finney did have a big success portraying a working class angry man in 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning'.

It seems David Lean liked to employ young untried people as well as established stage-trained professionals.

But Lean hated working with Finney on the extended screen tests and hated his performance.

I've read about those Finney screen tests and they were supposedly quite elaborate so that they could have been used in the final film if they had been successful. I've often wondered what happened to them. They've never turned up for public viewing.

They are in the same room with Liza's Evita screen test.

Still fascinates me how strong and electric the duo chemistry Ron Moody & Jack Wild was. Quite rare for people so far apart in age.

Between Moody’s playfulness and Wild’s worldliness, they seemed to meet in the middle comedically.

I'm the one who called Oliver! too colorful and jolly, which it is. But ultimately, it is an excellent cinematic rendering of a stage musical, and there are very few of these which are really good. It may not be Lean's Oliver Twist, but what is? Oliver! is excellent.

Was Fagin a child molester? Is that why he wanted Oliver back, since that was his favorite plaything?

R195, yes.

Well, not necessarily. Oliver was far prettier and better spoken than the other child thieves, which would give him the chance to get into place where the other lowlifes couldn't go, and please correct me if I'm wrong but I vaguely remember that Fagin thought that Oliver's family was looking for him and might be wiling to pay for the kid.

That's one thing that's a bit off in the movie, the fact that Oliver Twist has an upper-class accent and excellent grammar. How did a child who grew up in a workhouse learn to talk like that???

[quote] learn to talk like that???

You'd know the answer to that question if you saw the David Lean version.

A clue: the locket.

'That's one thing that's a bit off in the movie, the fact that Oliver Twist has an upper-class accent and excellent grammar. How did a child who grew up in a workhouse learn to talk like that???'

Well he's starring in a big splashy colorful Hollywood movie which has to have broad popular appeal to make a profit so his parents taught him so people could understand him before they put him in the workhouse.

[quote] Brando was offered Lawrence first but turned it down.

It was Spiegel who offered the role to Brando because Spiegel hired Brando for 'On The Waterfront.

But David Lean very quickly quashed that ridiculous suggestion— especially after Brando massacred an English accent in 'Mutiny On The Bounty" and sacked the original director, Carol Reed.

Gee, Carol Reed. Where have I heard that name before? Wasn't he the guy you tried to get when David Lean wasn't available?

He was the guy you got when you wanted to make a musical. Lean was the guy you got when you didn't.

[quote] David Lean and Carol Reed belong together as much for their differences as their similarities, throwing each other into relief with their contrasting natures. By the end of the 1940s they had both enjoyed a string of successes and were Britain’s two most prominent directors. It was natural for journalists to write of them together, and then to compare them.

[quote] In 1950 the New York Times described Lean as ‘still second to Carol Reed among British directors‘. Today, I suppose, in the age of The English Patient, it is Lean who is the more in fashion.

The sound of Christmas carols today makes me wonder if Sir Carol Reed was named after these ancient songs?

I was totally in Love with Jack Wild in HR Pufnstuf ! My baby gayling heart would beat madly when I saw him. As an aside,I saved my pennies and sent away for a Freddie The Flute and I loved it madly. I carried it everywhere until my mean ass brother stole it and bent it all up. I was inconsolable.

Too bad Wild was pufnstuf namely tobacco. Killed him as much as alcohol did