Great Expectations

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The British filmmaker David Lean (1908–1991) is known today almost exclusively as the director of monumental historical films such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965). Yet his most creative phase was in the 1940s and early 1950s, when he produced a string of black-and-white films that sparkle with narrative and visual ingenuity. Among the most beautiful are his adaptations of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations and Oliver Twist (from July 17 on cinefile). The first of the two is about a double social experiment: Pip, a village boy who grew up in poverty, learns at the age of twenty that an anonymous benefactor has given him a home in London, a lifetime income, and with it the carefree life of a “gentleman,” while Pip's unrequited childhood sweetheart Estella, the adopted daughter of a eccentric woman who abandoned her, is raised to be an avenger of men. These two strange fates initially turn Pip into an aimless snob and Estella into a cool heartbreaker, raising the question of whether it is possible to escape social determinism in a ruthless class society such as that of 19th-century Britain, as the paths of the mismatched couple branch out and cross several times. Of course, the question is timeless – and so gripping because Lean's dramatization benefits from the social X-ray vision and malicious humor of the narrative and dialogue genius Dickens, whose penultimate novel Lean also knows how to condense in a captivating way. Most striking from today's perspective are the fantastic actors, the stylized sets, costumes, and hairstyles, and the expressive black-and-white photography, which – in the tradition of German silent films and film noir – makes no attempt at naturalism. No, Great Expectations is pure cinematic theatricality and, for that very reason, strikingly modern. Those who enjoy virtuoso alienation effects will find it impossible to get enough of it.