A musical, with very little talking. Undoubtably a great movie. It all seems very old now, and it’s very very long, but I’m glad I watched it once. A great movie, if you’re prepared for what you’ll get.
The story is of course Oliver Twist, everyone knows it. It starts putting you already in that heartbreaking atmosphere, when you see children working hard like slaves and then walking like a little army and sitting down to eat a bowl of “gruel” while the men fill their fat bellies with lots of rich food.
Oliver (Mark Lester) is sent to ask some more, and the orphanage manager or whatever he’s called takes him to the governor to be punished, and then sent on the street to be sold. A funeral house buys him to put him to work, but when a guy insults his dead mother Oliver fights him. He’s put in a cellar as punishment but he manages to escape and go to London. There he meets another boy, Jack Dawkins, called ‘the artful Dodger’ (Jack Wild), who gives him a place to sleep. He takes him where many other boys live, with old Fagin (Ron Moody) who teaches them to pickpocket for a living. During the night Oliver sees Fagin with his hidden treasure, but Fagin lets him be and Oliver says nothing to anyone about it.
The first time Oliver goes out ‘on the job’ with Dodger and another boy, they steal a wallet and Oliver is arrested.
Fagin and Bill Sykes (Oliver Reed) are worried that he might talk about them - Bill and his girlfriend Nancy (Shani Wallis) were two of his thieves when they were little, and even now Bill keeps stealing for him.
Nancy goes to the trial to see what Oliver says: nothing. He’s so scared he can’t even utter his own name. The judge sentence him to three months of hard labour, but then a witness comes forward. The man says Oliver is innocent, and the case is dismissed. Nancy is pleased with her report, and thinks they could let him be now, since he said nothing about them.
The rich man that was the ‘victim’ of the robbery takes Oliver home to make amends, giving him a home, clothes, food and a comfortable bed.
There are three minutes of interval music…
Bill won’t let it go, he’s determined to get the boy back. Fagin wants things done quietly, and asks Nancy to bring Oliver back nicely. Nancy refuses, wants Oliver to have his chance at a better life, but Bill hits her and ‘orders’ her to do what he says.
If everything else seems so old and fictional (an entire village without one kind soul caring for a little orphan, stuff like that), this bit seems very up-to-date. Nancy sings “as long as he needs me, I’m sure that he needs me”, saying that she loves him and won’t betray his trust… it’s 2018 now and we all know how that turns out, don’t we? poor Nancy…
So, Nancy calls the boy and walks him to where Bill is waiting. Bill abducts Oliver and bring him back to Fagin. When Bill wants to beat Oliver, Nancy stops him firmly, this time.
The rich man discovers that the boy is the son of his poor niece that ran away from home because she was pregnant but her boyfriend had left her alone. Nancy knocks at their house, saying poor Oliver has been taken, but she won’t betray who did it; still, she wants to help Oliver, so she’ll take him to the London Bridge where the rich man can meet him and take him home.
Bill uses Oliver for a ‘job’, to rob a house, but they fail and go back.
Nancy manages to sneak Oliver away, but Bill sees them and chase after them. He stops them when they are at the bridge, already able to see the man not too far away. Bill kills Nancy by hitting her repeatedly with a crowbar, then takes the boy and runs away, back to Fagin’s place where he demands some money to get away. Fagin is horrified, seeing the blood on him he understands what he did; all the boys are scared.
The police and lots of people come, so Fagin shouts for the boys to run away. Bill still takes Oliver for cover.
Fagin loses all his money into what looks extraordinarily like the river Ankh.
Bill is shot dead by a policeman. Fagin and Dodger reunite and go away together, while Oliver is back with the rich man who takes him back home.
Almost-all’s well that ends well… poor Nancy. I know there are people who would say that she deserved it for what she did, or that she was as bad as he was or she wouldn’t have stayed with him, or that she was just an idiot… there are people who would say things like that in this rotten world, but they : totally lack empathy and don’t understand anything. They’re either men or they are women who never had a real trouble in their lives or they always felt so sure of themselves they can’t, simply cannot understand a girl like Nancy. It’s easy to say : leave him and go away, but what could Nancy do, where could she go, how could she escape him? Plus, the feeling of being alone could have been so terrible for her… I pity her. She had a good heart, or she wouldn’t have died.
I liked all the actors, Oliver was so candid and hopeful and sad, Bill was so evil at first sight…
It tells you something about Oliver’s world when you first see Fagin and think that this old man living with lots of boys, using them to steal for him, is not such a bad man after all because he’s nice to them and gives them food and beds…
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