Oliver! Reviews

Quick – what did Sir Carol Reed win his Oscar for? If you answered The Third Man, The Fallen Idol, or any of his acknowledged masterpieces you’d be wrong. In fact, Reed didn’t win his Oscar until late in his career during the height of the Academy’s obsession with two different things: musicals and all things British.

 

Enter into that atmosphere Oliver! An all-singing, all-dancing version of Charles Dickens’ well-known story of a street urchin finding a happy ending. The 60s were a busy period of Hollywood snatching Broadway productions and recreating them to a zealously faithful degree.

 

Not only did we get My Fair Lady, West Side Story, and The Sound of Music as transplants and Best Picture winners, but The Music Man, Funny Girl, and Hello, Dolly! as nominees. Musicals were a beloved institution by this point and some of those films managed to emerge from the pack as some of the best of the best while others have found their luster diminish with time.

 

Oliver!, a bit like The Music Man, occupies a nebulous grey zone between these twin poles. Sure, West Side Story and My Fair Lady are acknowledged classics, but Oliver! felt alternately grim for the movie musical and behind the times for 1968. It’s well-made, mostly well-acted, and filled with memorable songs and sequences but there’s a hole in the center of the movie.

 

Not to pick on a child actor, but that’s exactly what I’m about to do. Mark Lester is such a blank that he can’t manage to compete or even hold his own against Jack Wild’s Artful Dodger, Ron Moody’s Fagin, or Oliver Reed’s Bill Sikes. He feels like a cinematic creation from an entirely different era, like the wide-eyed stiffs that populate MGM films from the 30s. His voice is obviously dubbed, and his performance is so saintly and bland that Oliver Twist barely registers as a character. He’s merely a cipher for the various nefarious characters to react against and move the plot forward.

 

While Oliver Reed is clearly no musical star himself, they wisely jettisoned Sikes few songs and let Reed project a potent combination of sexuality and dark charisma in his role. You understand why Shani Wallis’ Nancy seems enthralled and hypnotized by his magnetic pull, and why the street urchins and Fagin find him a scarily volatile presence that must be gingerly interacted with. Its performances like his and Moody’s charming loser take on Fagin and Wild’s charismatic and adorable pickpocket.

 

Actually, Oliver! is at its best when our attention is redirected towards Wild and Moody almost exclusively as a never-to-be redeemed father/son-like pair. If only we had ended the movie there! All things considered, Oliver! is a near-masterpiece that survived the (often) adaptation process better than numerous other works. It’s a well oiled machined that features plenty of playful whistling past the graveyard.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this flick but since it won the Best Picture Academy award, I thought I should give it a try. The first interesting thing about this movie is that it was actually the end of an era. Indeed, while musicals were dominating the movie world at the time (The Broadway Melody (1929), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Going My Way (1944), An American in Paris (1951), Gigi (1958), West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), and The Sound of Music (1965) all won the Best Picture Academy award), this movie was the last musical to get the big prize. Eventually, it will take 34 years with ‘Chicago’ (which I really despised by the way) so that another musical won this prestigious award. Coming back to our main feature, I’m not sure if it is really that great. I mean, by now, I have seen so many adaptations of Charles Dickens’ classic that I have usually a hard time to care about this story anylonger and the fact that I’m not a huge fan of musicals in general didn’t help either. However, I actually liked this version. Indeed, the songs were pretty cool and I always had a weak spot for the Artful Dodger who is way more fun and interesting than the title character. To conclude, even though I don’t think it is really that great, it remains a solid musical and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

Anyone with a heart in them cannot help being lifted by this musical. I'm yet to meet anyone who doesn’t know at least one song...'Oliver!' is a British Institution.

Every single song makes you want to join in and stirs an unexplainable pride in the heart of any Londoner. Every single adaptation of Dicken's Oliver after this has yet to hold a candle. Nobody has played a better Dodger than Jack Wild, no Sykes is as good as Oliver Reed's and that’s not to mention Mr Bumble, Nancy and of course Fagin.

Funnily enough this production has become so popular that the storyline has replaced Dickens' original in the minds of most. Very few realise how much this movie deviates from the original plot of Dickens', 'Oliver Twist'. I won't spoil it for you..but the movie is barely like the book at all.

It's nothing like the book but still, I don’t care. 'Oliver!' is like the drunken uncle at a family party. His drunkenness is not normal, and maybe a tad worrying... but who cares, he has a cone on his head and is a good laugh.

Next time you're living in pestilence and poverty; driven to prostitution and crime in the dark and unforgiving streets of London...grab a gin and 'ave a good old Cockney Knees-up!