Great Expectations

So far of this great Dickens work, I've seen three versions, the 1946 David Lean film, this 1999 adaptation and the recent 2011 series airing just at Christmas(the Alfonso Cuaron is top-priority on my to see list). I did find this adaptation to be excellent and solid enough as an adaptation of the book, but I questioned is it the best version.

While this version has for me the better adult Estella and young Pip, the Lean version for its masterly storytelling, the cleverly written narration from Pip's viewpoint so we can identify with him and how much atmosphere there is at the beginning I have always considered one of the all-time great adaptations of any of Dickens' work. They are both superior though to the 2011 series, which had great production values and a wonderful support cast, but it is hindered by some rushed pacing and two miscast leads.

Back to this adaptation, it is wonderful to look at. The costumes, lighting, sets and scenery look both striking and atmospheric especially Miss Havisham's mansion, and the haunting camera angles are equally good. The music score is magnificent, in fact I haven't heard a music score for a TV adaptation this good for a while now. The writing is intelligent and has the basic wit of Dickens' prose and the storytelling particularly with Miss Havisham is compelling.

Of the storytelling, I was engrossed throughout, but there were two things that didn't quite sit well with me. One was the ending, granted the closing line of the book is ambiguous, but to me the ending was reminiscent of a 19th century Can You Feel the Love Tonight, which I am not sure Dickens intended. Another is that there are moments when adult Pip is shown to have a somewhat vindictive side, which for some reason made me identify less with him.

That said, the direction is tight and assured, and I never felt the drama was sluggish or rushed. The cast are superb. Ioan Gruffodd has rarely been better than he was here, he does look very handsome(without being too much so that is) and he is charismatic. Of the three adaptations in regard to adult Estella, I think this adaptation is the only one to get it completely right, Lean's was competently portrayed if too sweet and the 2011 series had an Estella that was too plain and too expressionless. This Estella was complex and tragic, Justine Waddell as well as being very beautiful brought these across perfectly.

Great Expectations(1999) also has the best of the three young Pips in Gabriel Thomson. I liked Anthony Wager and Oscar Kennedy well enough, but Thomson looked cute and innocent while never coming across as bland. Gemma Gregory is excellent as well as young Estella. Of the adult support cast, there is much to credit. Daniel Evans brings Herbert Pocket to so much life, more so than any of his other acting counterparts, Emma Cunniffe proves an ideal anti-thesis to Estella and Tony Curran is very good as Orlick.

On top of that, we have a heart-breaking Joe Gargery in Clive Russell, Lesley Sharp shines as usual, Ian McDiarmid is a complex Jaggers and Bernard Hill is terrific as Magwitch. My personal favourite performance goes to Charlotte Rampling, she is a revelation as Miss Havisham, there is such a sinister quality to her performance I felt myself getting chills.

Overall, excellent with a great cast but for atmosphere and even better quality of storytelling I also heartily recommend Lean's film. 8/10 Bethany Cox

`Great Expectations' is the best of Charles Dickens's novels. Maybe it's the best novel that there is. It's certainly a novel where every incident is important - so there is no excuse for a TV version being a miserable three hours long. If they HAD to truncate it, though, then there's no help for it: some valuable scenes must be removed.

What they've done instead is to sort of leave everything in, but skate over it all at high speed. It's as if they've simply left out every other sentence. The opening encounter with Magwitch in the churchyard is conveyed without being shown at all. We get a few seconds of terror, then a cut to later that evening, and then we're shown a bit more of the crucial scene in flashback - only just enough to understand what is going on, if that. (Don't even get me STARTED on the ludicrous editing, or the self-consciously arty camera angles.) Some scenes have been re-written. The result is usually awful.

Is this just the complaint of someone who has read the book, and finds the filmed version to be different? No: rather the reverse. If you haven't read the book you'll have a much harder time than I did even making sense of things; and you won't, as I did, have any particular reason to care about the characters.

For instance: the central character is Pip. Anyone who has read the book knows how close Dickens brings us to him. Not once in this version are we, so to speak, introduced to Pip. No scene lasts long enough - he does not confide in any other character long enough - for us to get a sense of his motivations or a reason to continue to sympathise with him after he does something shameful. What's more, the mature Pip is an utter disaster. The re-writing of key encounters with Miss Havisham, Orlick, and Estella (that's right - all three) makes Pip out to be more thoughtless, more cowardly, more vindictive and less intelligent than Dickens makes him out to be. (Note that Dickens doesn't make him out to be vindictive at all.) If we care what happens to him at all it's only because we have even less reason to care what happens to anyone else.

I've only scratched the surface - it's bad all the way through. I will, though, allow that many of the actors give excellent performances under trying circumstances. (I can't warm at all to Ioan Gruffudd as the mature Pip, but that was probably the script.) That's about it. I can't even recommend this as the best TV version going, since the Disney series of 1989 (a decent five hours long) is all that one could wish for. With that version in existence this one was just a waste of everyone's time. Don't make it a waste of yours.

Whilst it has not stuck to the text word for word, it has not veered greatly from it. The film covers everything that needs to be covered on the whole, and where it has altered things, I think it has done so for the better. The film still paints and amazing picture of this excellent piece of literary work!

The casting was simply spectacular, the idea of sexing up Miss Havesham with the delectable Charlotte Rampling was perhaps the most unique and welcomed aspect of this production, which does anything but suffer from it. Waddell, Hill, Gruffudd, and Evans all give stellar performances and carry the film. The score is extremely haunting and so spectacular that I went out and bought the CD (which we were very lucky the BBC released). How Peter Salem has not been snapped up by Hollywood yet I don't know!

The score on top of the direction and production design make this a mouth watering feature that I'd recommend to anyone! The film got me through A-Level English.

As a classic, Great Expectations is hardly done any justice with this film. I have seen the mini-series film on Pride & Prejudice and it was an almost literal reproduction of the novel. In contrast, this film just about assumes one has read the novel and pretty much depends upon it as well. There is absolutely no introduction, and as such, the tight relationship between Pip and Joe is entirely skipped over. The characterizations of the young Pip and Estella are altogether unbelievable, and there are many instances of this film veering from the text. Jaggers's most identifying property, his finger-biting and pointing/shaking is essentially deleted from the novel, and there is, in addition to that, a lot more left out for, I suppose, the sake of cutting the feature length.

I've seen some three or four adaptations of this classic novel, and I honestly think that this is one of the best out there. The settings are appropriately dark and in keeping with Dickens' bleak writing, a shining example being Miss Havisham's mansion. The acting is perfectly superb; Ioan Gruffudd is most definitely one of the best finds of the past few years. Ian McDiaramid is wonderful as usual, and Gruffudd's Titanic castmate Bernard Hill (that movie's Captain EJ Smith) is a great Magwitch. Keep your eye on Ioan, I predict great things! His performance is outstanding, down to the replacing of his own Welsh accent with Pip's distinctive lower-class English one. Lovely filming, great direction and wonderful acting make this a great addition to the already distinguished collection of the BBC.