|
OLIVER! My candidate as a great musical. And it ranks right up there with any straight movie version of the Charles Dickens novel, including David Lean’s Oliver Twist and the Roman Polanski remake. Hard to know who to point to as the real star because there are many. Certainly director Carol Reed, who puts it altogether doing nothing new in the musical form yet because the old format has been affectionately refurbished, it looks as good as new. John Box’s production design is among the most evocative of Dickens we’re likely to see; it’s companion complimenting not just the author’s social criticism and flavor but also the sets by John Bryan in Lean’s movie and Sean Kenny’s set concepts for the London and Broadway musical productions. Fagin’s hideaway, for example, with its sinking-in-the-mud stairs, is like staged VistaVision—we feel sated by the theatrically decrepit ambiance, with Oswald Morris’s photography widening the impact of the packed-in dilapidation. (Having been Lean’s camera operator, he’s primed for the job.) Nearly all of Lionel Bart’s score is exceptionally well integrated, maintaining a faithfulness to the text’s varied emotions, though “As Long As He Needs Me” exposes a good woman’s lack of maturity apparently needing to be penalized. (In an opera, yes, in a family musical, maybe not.) There’s Ron Moody’s greedy Rasputin-like Fagin, about whom adult viewers may have suspicions of implicit pedophilia, downplaying the anti-Semitism. If singing “Reviewing the Situation” a little too loudly while his bands of roving thieves are sleeping, never any doubt the performance is vaudeville as practiced art; he originated the miscreant at the West End, getting the movie when Peter Sellers and then Peter O’Toole withdrew. Another example of the director’s cautious but not fully sanitized approach in making both a family movie and a refresher course for viewers who read Dickens in high school: Oliver Reed as Bill Sikes, showcased to unload the menace without overkill. Otoh, Shani Willis’s sturdy Nancy, Mark Lester’s beatific Oliver, and Jack Wild’s Artful Dodger are fulfilments of Dickens’s daydreaming. Let’s not forget the scene-stealing owl. Oliver! has its die-hard detractors, still complaining it triumphed over Funny Girl, The Lion in Winter, Paul Newman’s Rachel, Rachel and Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet for the top 1968 Academy Award. In the Chicago metropolitan area, the musical premiered as a roadshow first at the UA Cinema 150 in Oakbrook, running 45 weeks; seven months into that run, it opened as a concurrent hardticket at the Loop’s Palace, for 21 weeks. Filmed in Panavision, with 70mm blowup. Oscar wins: best picture, director, art/direction, sound, adapted score. Oscar nominations for best actor (Moody), supporting actor (Wild), adapted screenplay, cinematography, costumes and film editing. Special Oscar to choreographer Onna White. ROLL OVER IMAGE
Text COPYRIGHT © 2001 RALPH BENNER (Revised 6/2013) All Rights Reserved. |
