Little Dorrit

The first 20 minutes is excellent with the story constantly being moved forward yet never feeling rushed. Things seem to play out in real time, as though this was theatre and not just film. Much like other favoured female characters in Dicken's stories from those books written in the 1840s and 1850s Amy Dorrit is a dutiful kind daughter much like Florence Dombey, Little Nell or Agnes in David Copperfield. Nor does the story have a diabolical villain like Uriah Herp, Squeers or Quilp. The characters here are complex, some embody unhealthy off-putting attributes but that doesn't make them your typical TV or Film bad guys. This film operates with a high level of realism in that respect. The story though is happy to poke fun at some of the absurdities of Victorian society, Government departments, impossible to navigate or prisons were men are held because they haven't paid their debts, while being completely unable to work in order to pay off that debt.

The Little Dorrit we meet in part 1 is one we see very little of but think about a great deal. She's a kind sweet shy character, just like our hero and that's why I think they work so well together. You're longing for them to come together. Little Dorrit is slightly cruelly contrasted with Flora, a middle-aged, overweight, forward, outspoken, silly woman. Some of the production design and sound editing is also brilliant, the poverty we see at the end in the living quarters the sound of the shouting, the yelling coming through the thing walls, the sound of squalor, poverty and the flies buzzing around his room. The film also works at a symbolic level too, the needle work Little Dorrit does so well displaying the quiet patient nature of her personality.

The film doesn't rely on frantic editing, loud sound, jump scares, over the top performances or gag after gag. It's a mature film, asking it's audience to think and feel more deeply.

I love the sound design as our main character returns to his mothers home, the creaky floorboards and the wind howling away outside. The costumes are also superb and really inject some colour into the film. The casting is also excellent and then you have the original story by Dickens, a superb storyteller. When we meet Mr Dorrit played by Alec Guiness it's such an interesting character, despite his reduced circumstances it's made clear he's very much still a gentleman who has a great deal of sway inside the prison.

The actress playing Little Dorrit speaks very little to begin with, it's often as much about what she isn't saying than what she is. The actress has very dark eyes, dark hair, a very thin frame, and gives the character a slightly sickly look and a slightly mournful sad look. There's no trace of exuberance or vanity or anger within her. It's quite common among Dickens characters, she's a downtrodden outcast in a sense, like Oliver Twist or Little Nell who still retains her innocence and goodness.

In Part 1 every scene is seen through his eyes. It's quite a clever device as we really get to know him an see things from his perspective. Equally we wonder once he's left the room how the other characters who remain do next.

This sprawling movie can take a lot of discipline to watch in its entirety, but it is worth seeing just for the performances of Derek Jacobi in the first half and Alec Guinness in the second. Jacobi is wonderful as the gentle, unlucky Arthur Clennam, who keeps finding that through nobody's fault, he keeps missing out on happiness. It is sweetly heartbreaking to follow his growing affection for Minnie Meagles, only to watch her throw herself away on a conceited young fool, whom even she seems to realize cannot equal Clennam in worth. Jacobi has a great actor's ability to tell a story without saying a word, as when he gently drops Minnie's roses into the river and watches them float away, and we realize he is saying goodbye to love. The scene later on in prison, when he discovers that he has missed his chance for love again, but this time it is he who all unaware has been the object of another's love, is breathtaking. Once again, without a word, Jacobi is able to portray his anguish and the chaos of memories and ideas that suddenly assail him, until he is almost suffocating, trapped and helpless in his little cell in the Marshalsea.

The second half of the movie suffers from the absence of Jacobi, and I found myself eagerly looking forward to every chance appearance of his, but Alec Guinness also gives a fine performance as the indigent William Dorrit, whose sudden acquisition of a legacy not only frees him from debtor's prison, but also turns him into a heartless snob and social climber. Among the other performances in this film worth noting, is that of Miriam Margolyse as the aging coquette, Flora Finching, a kindly, ridiculous scatterbrain, talking nonstop while taking little nips out of the medicine bottle to keep up her spirits.

A great novel, and a great movie. BUT! A few observations...I understand that the novel is very complex, that the plot turns in a number of layers, and that the film is already of great length. However I think it is seriously lacking to omit rather major elements and characters, such as the villain Blandois upon whom much of the plot turns. And I was disappointed as well to see Tattycoram (which would be such a delightful part for any actress!) left out. But these things aside, it is still a favourite movie which I've watched (on VHS) many times. The colourful characters are marvelously Dickensian as portrayed by the cast, most notably Guinness, Greenwood, Max Wall, Roshan Seth, and Jacobi. Has Sarah Pickering appeared in anything else? She was convincing in her character too. Though seventeen years old now, the film continues to delight and entertain, but I sure miss Blandois and Tattycoram!

BBC Radio 3 puts out a fascinating programme each week entitled "Building a Library" in which CDs of classical works are compared and evaluated culminating with a "best buy" recommendation. This would hardly be possible with works of cinema where very rarely are there more than two versions, the first invariably the winner as a movie can only be that good to tempt a remake. I suppose one could do a "Building a Library" with "Hamlet" but I wouldn't be in a position to take that on as I only know two versions (Olivier and Branagh) really well. How about a collective "Building a Library" - film versions of Dickens, say, - now that would be a real challenge. Here goes! I won't deal with all as that would take up too much user comment space. Just a few for good measure. Remember Noel Langley's "Pickwick Papers" of 1952 - great fun with a host of good cameo parts from people such as Joyce Grenfell, Hermione Baddeley, Donald Wolfit, Harry Fowler and others but all rather lightweight compared with the rest I have chosen. Earlier still was Cavalcanti's version of "Nicholas Nickleby" for Ealing, some good sets and the scene where wicked Uncle Ralph gets his desserts wonderfully atmospheric, but so much to cram into a film of moderate feature length that scenes scarcely have time to breathe. Although a good try it all seems too rushed. The oddball in this little collection is undoubtedly a 1988 Portugese version of "Hard Times" set in modern day Lisbon by Joao Botelho, well worth seeing as a curiosity but hardly to be compared with my remaining four choices, each very special in its own right. I would have to include one TV version in my shortlist as the BBC generally do their classic serials so well and were on superlative form with their 1999 "David Copperfield", even capping George Cukor's richly entertaining 1935 film. (Just occasionally a more recent version is better!) The reason I admire the BBC version so much is the wonderful casting with Maggie Smith, Pauline Quirke and Nicholas Lyndhurst playing roles they were just born for. There is even a diminutive Harry Potter playing young David most affectingly. It is probably the Dickens adaptation that moves me the most though I suppose it has to be eclipsed by the three that have that greater degree of cinematic imagination. These are the marvellous David Lean '40s adaptations of "Great Expectations" and "Oliver Twist" and most recently Christine Edzard's "Little Dorrit". For a long time "Oliver Twist" was my favourite of the Lean pair, oodles of atmosphere, wonderful art direction and camera-work and a rooftop climax to take the breath away, but I suppose "Great Expectations" has it for libretto, late as opposed to early Dickens and Lean an ever faithful interpreter of the novel's range and subtleties. Without Christine Edzard's "Little Dorrit" it would be the winner. Her remarkable independent production for length alone (two films totalling six hours) dwarfs all contenders. She cleverly tells the same story from the different perspective of the two main protagonists, Arthur Clennem and Amy Dorrit, this "Rashomon" like approach dominating the first half of each film. The pace is leisurely but always purposeful - none of those irritating longueurs of characters taking up time to cross a street or room that bedevil so many TV adaptations. Street scenes in particular have an amazing sense of realism with hoards of people bustling along giving the feeling of just how busy Victorian London must have been, the credit sequence of Part I wonderfully effective in depicting this. We sense from this very opening the loving care with which every background detail of Dickens's vast fresco of society will be unfolded. As in the novel everything revolves around the theme of money and the misery that both possession as well as dispossession can bring. The casting is faultless with marvellous swansongs from Joan Greenwood and Max Wall and Alec Guinness possibly at his finest as William Dorrit, a superb portrayal of a shallow man with delusions of grandeur. Throughout Edzard is at pains to eschew anything that smacks of pathetic fallacy by not over dramatising atmosphere, but the film never looks plain. Although most of the exteriors are studio constructed the interiors have an extraordinary sense of authenticity down to the last detail. Everything looks and sounds exactly right such as the shabby wallpaper of a livingroom in the Marshalsea with at one point the seemingly endless buzzing of a solitary fly. Unlike the Lean films this is one that seems constructed out of everyday incidents rather than great dramatic setpieces. It is not a film that moves and excites as much while one is watching it, until, that is, the final half hour. When it reaches the tragedy of William Dorrit's mental confusion at a society banquet followed by the terrible scene leading up to the suicide of Merdle where he visits his son and daughter-in-law to borrow a knife we have the realisation that to search for an adaptation that more perfectly realises Dickens's intentions would be an impossibility.

Have you ever wondered what they meant when they said "Debtor's Prison?" This line as pretty common place in British Films, however none more so than in The Movie "SCROOGE", with the excellent Alistair Sims. This is where the person who had taken a loan and wouldn't be able to repay it was afraid of going to "Debtor's Prison", saying " I can't take me wife to Debtor's Prison?" Scrooge then turned on him and told him it had nothing to do with his wife or with himself or that matter. And wished a god Day. Remember? Well since that time I have always wondered about "Debtor's Prison" and just what does this place do and so on. This then is what Little Dorrit is based upon, life in Debtor's Prison. Alec Guinness was absolutely Brilliant as Mr. William Dorrit, whom after having fallen on hard times, tried to maintain an air of Aristocracy, Class and Distinction even if he was in Debtor's Prison. We Watch Little Dorrit come into the world in this place and discover hat there are others who are just as bad off, yet all maintain themselves as best as they can. We see Little Dorrit grow into a fine young lady and we see what it must have been like, living in the Victorian age, of Pomposity, and Airs of Superiority and Aristocracy. "One must Maintain appearances", would say William Dorrit and so it went. This is a rather slow paced film, which only serves to add to the impression of the time. To me, this film is the ultimate look into what it must have been like to live in wretched poverty, in Debtor's prison all the while maintaining one's position in life and one's sense of integrity. Mr. Guinness was Unbelievable as William Dorrit. You knew what he was trying to do, but you also knew " As did he" how futile it all was. But as it goes along, you find your self, drawn into the movie, it doesn't speed up for you,rather it calms you and bring's you unto itself. The true mark of excellence in a truly good movie. I would highly recommend this movie, most especially as a Family viewing affair. Get out the popcorn, get all the drinks ready and anything else that you could want and when your ready, step into the magnificent world of 18th century England and live a little in a place called Debtor's prison, for about 1 and 1/2 Hrs. The cast are absolutely excellent in their individual roles. I could name them all and tell you why, but it's much better if you see them for yourself. This Film is a real Gem and a very rare treat. Happy Viewing. Warmest Regards Aaron