Favorite Movie Version of Oliver Twist?

[Brenda in MA]

There are so many versions available, can anyone recommend a good one?

TIA,
Brenda

[GothicGyrl]

There are so many versions available, can anyone recommend a good one?

TIA,
Brenda
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063385/

Oliver!

This is the best version, IMHO.

[Jane in NC]

There are so many versions available, can anyone recommend a good one?

TIA,
Brenda

A grim and dirty view of London is given in Polanski's Oliver Twist. No version is completely faithful to the novel (it is just too long to convert into a movie!) but Polanski hits the major points and shows the grit.

[Ms. Riding Hood]

We loooove Oliver! but probably isn't the best as far as being like the book. Last year we watched the Polanski version and quite frankly I found it very dry and dull. The story is supposed to be funny, if also poignant, but I didn't get any laughs out of Polanski. I'm no film critic, but somehow the direction or the delivery was off--didn't bring out the humor at all. Just me.

[Jane in NC]

We loooove Oliver! but probably isn't the best as far as being like the book. Last year we watched the Polanski version and quite frankly I found it very dry and dull. The story is supposed to be funny, if also poignant, but I didn't get any laughs out of Polanski. I'm no film critic, but somehow the direction or the delivery was off--didn't bring out the humor at all. Just me.

No, not just you. Many critics felt the same way. But Dickens, in my mind, is a social critic. Polanski spent part of his childhood in the Warsaw ghetto. I felt that he painted the misery of the children's home with an empathy I had not previously seen on the screen.

Jane