Carol Reed’s 1968 adaptation of Oliver! exudes the kind of confidence that only a gigantic, lavish musical can muster. Based on Lionel Bart’s stage musical, which in turn draws from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the film takes a famously grim story of poverty, crime, and child exploitation and turns it into a colorful, exuberant spectacle. It shouldn’t work quite as well as it does, but much of Oliver! is genuinely infectious.
Buy Oliver!The film’s opening moments establish its peculiar mixture of darkness and cheerfulness. Oliver (Mark Lester) is an orphan raised in a miserable workhouse, and his request for more food earns him punishment and expulsion. Before long, he encounters the criminal Fagin (Ron Moody), who runs a gang of young pickpockets. After that, Oliver! moves between Dickensian misery and enormous musical numbers with remarkable ease.
That contrast is central to the film’s appeal. Reed doesn’t attempt to disguise the ugliness of Oliver’s world, but the production design, costumes, choreography, and music transform it into something almost like a storybook. The streets of Victorian London become a vast theatrical playground, filled with smoke, mud, colorful characters, and unbelievably elaborate sets. The movie is frequently beautiful to look at, and the Oswald Morris’ Academy Award-winning cinematography gives the production a sense of scale that a stage version could never match.
The songs are the real engine, however. “Food, Glorious Food;” “Consider Yourself;” “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two;” and “Who Will Buy?” are wonderfully memorable, and the film understands that a musical number should be allowed to become a full-blown event. “Consider Yourself,” in particular, is an irresistible burst of movement and camaraderie. The songs occasionally make the story feel less like a narrative than a parade of set pieces, but that is hardly a fatal complaint when the set pieces are so entertaining.
Ron Moody is the film’s not-so-secret weapon. His Fagin is simultaneously funny, pathetic, manipulative, and strangely sympathetic. Moody throws himself into the character’s physicality, giving every gesture and facial expression a theatrical flourish. He also has terrific chemistry with the young performers. Shani Wallis is equally memorable as Nancy, bringing emotional weight to the film’s darker material.
Oliver! does have some baggage. Its treatment of poverty and criminality can feel sanitized by the cheerful musical framework, while the sheer theatricality occasionally overwhelms the human story. Mark Lester is also more effective as a visual presence than as a singer or dramatic performer. Yet these shortcomings are difficult to hold against a film so committed to entertaining its audience.
There is something wonderfully old-fashioned about Oliver!. It is big, unapologetically sentimental, occasionally excessive, and packed with songs that refuse to leave your head. The result is a movie that can be both surprisingly grim and gloriously joyous, sometimes within the same five minutes. It may not be subtle, but subtlety was never really the point. Oliver! wants to put on a show, and for much of its two-and-a-half-hour running time, it puts on a hell of a show.
