Lean + Dickens at Film Forum

Film Forum is in the midst of a David Lean retrospective, showing all 16 movies directed by the greatest of British filmmakers. This weekend we went to a double feature of Lean's two Dickens adaptations, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations. While there are aspects of the films (especially Oliver Twist) that are slightly off now, Lean's precise control of the camera and mastery of atmosphere make the movies a delight more than half a century later. (The opening of Great Expectations is an absolute marvel.) Sergei Eisenstein famously said that Dickens, through his use of framing and scene, is the conceptual inventor of cinema. These movies show that Lean, in remaking Dickens, is one of its perfecters.