Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist is an 1838 novel by Charles Dickens, probably one of the best-known of all his works, along with A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations. It has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations, and the basis for a highly successful British musical, entitled simply Oliver!. It was originally published as a serial.

Film and TV adaptations

There have been many film and TV adaptations of Dickens' novel:

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• The earliest film adaptation is a silent movie made in 1909.
• A feature film from 1948 by David Lean, starring Alec Guinness in one of his most defining roles as Fagin. See Oliver Twist (1948 film).
• A musical adaptation, Oliver! (1968), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1969, featuring Mark Lester as Oliver Twist.
• A 1985 BBC television drama adaptation in their Classic Serial strand, produced by Terrance Dicks and starring Eric Porter as Fagin.
• An animated interpretation by Disney called Oliver & Company (1988), losely based on Dickens, about an orphaned cat named Oliver who meets a dog called Dodger.
• A TV-movie was released in 1997, see Oliver Twist (1997).
• An ITV/PBS production from 1999, adapted by Alan Bleasdale and starring Sam Smith as Oliver, Robert Lindsay as Fagin, and Andy Serkis as Bill Sikes. See Oliver Twist (miniseries).
• The 2003 movie Twist by director Jacob Tierney is loosely based on the novel but set in modern-day Toronto with male prostitution and drugs rather than pick-pocketing.
• During the summer and autumn of 2004 director Roman Polanski filmed a new version of Oliver Twist, which was released in September 2005. Starring are Barney Clark (Oliver Twist), Ben Kingsley (Fagin), Jamie Foreman (Bill Sikes), Harry Eden (the Artful Dodger) and Leanne Rowe (Nancy). The screenplay of this new version has been signed by Ronald Harwood.

Adaptations of the novel tend to simplify the original story.

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The way the book is normally interpreted on screen causes modern readers to focus on Bill Sikes as the villain. They thus fail to recognise how Fagin has trained Sikes and made him what he is; part of Dickens' message is that he might have done the same with Oliver had chance not intervened.

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The renowned comic book creator, Will Eisner, disturbed by the anti-semitism in the typical depiction of Fagin, created a graphic novel in 2003 titled Fagin the Jew. In this book, the back story of the character and events of Oliver Twist are depicted from his point of view.

Related Topics:
Comic book - Will Eisner - Anti-semitism - Graphic novel - 2003 - Fagin the Jew - Back story

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