Oliver Twist

Expressionistic noir photography suffuses David Lean’s Oliver Twist with a nightmarish quality, fitting its bleak, industrial setting. In Dickens’ classic tale, an orphan wends his way from cruel apprenticeship to den of thieves in search of a true home. Here Alec Guinness is the quintessential Fagin, his controversial performance fully restored in Criterion’s digital transfer.

United Kingdom
1948
116 minutes
Black & White
1.33:1
English
Spine #32

Special Features

The original theatrical trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

New cover by Gordon Reynolds

DVD 1 Disc $27.96 SRP: $39.95

Digital Options

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Special Features

The original theatrical trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

New cover by Gordon Reynolds

Cast & Credits

Cast

Robert Newton: Bill Sykes
Alec Guinness: Fagin
Kay Walsh: Nancy
Francis L. Sullivan: Mr. Bumble
Henry Stephenson: Mr. Brownlow
Mary Clare: Mrs. Corney
Anthony Newley: Artful Dodger
John Howard Davies: Oliver Twist

Credits

Director: David Lean
Producer: Ronald Neame
Music: Sir Arnold Bax
Costumes: Margaret Furse
Editing: Jack Harris
Cinematography: Guy Green
Screenplay: David Lean
Screenplay: Stanley Haynes
Based on the novel by: Charles Dickens

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Explore

David Lean

Director

For many cinephiles, the name David Lean signifies grand moviemaking—sweeping epics like Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. But the long and eclectic career of this legendary British director encompasses arresting intimacy as well, as evidenced by the films of his in the Criterion Collection. Among those are pictures that he was responsible for editing, early on in his work in film: some of his national cinema’s greatest hits, including Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard’s Pygmalion, Gabriel Pascal’s Major Barbara, and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 49th Parallel. In the forties and early fifties, having moved to directing, he made several luminous films, including adaptations of such classic and important contemporary works from the stage and page as Harold Brighouse’s Hobson’s Choice, Noël Coward’s Still Life (Brief Encounter, in the film version), and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. All are graced by evocative, shadowy black-and-white cinematography and elegantly restrained compositions. Summertime, his gorgeous 1955 Technicolor trip to Venice with Katharine Hepburn, marked a turning point in his career: the sun-dappled location shoot was galvanizing for Lean, and the remainder of his films, from The Bridge on the River Kwai to A Passage to India, could be considered outdoor spectacles. Yet Lean’s deep interest in complex characters, his brilliant way with actors, and his classic sense of storytelling were never trumped by scale.