{"id":2557,"date":"2012-01-27T02:23:48","date_gmt":"2012-01-27T01:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/?p=2557"},"modified":"2012-01-27T02:35:36","modified_gmt":"2012-01-27T01:35:36","slug":"notes-on-leans-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/archive\/notes-on-leans-twist\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes On Lean’s Twist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday last: to Birkbeck’s own Cinema to see David Lean’s Oliver Twist<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0(1948). My first time in the cinema, and the first time I’ve seen – gotten around to, rather – the film.<\/p>\n

(after a certain age, there’s an awful lot of getting around to<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0things in one’s life… Have to remember that life is more than just a long To Do list – that implies one knows exactly<\/em> what one wants from life, which is never true…)<\/em><\/p>\n

The Birkbeck Cinema is really a 70-seat screening room used by various film societies, rather than a popcorn or arthouse venue with a regular daily programme (the smallest single-screen cinema in Central London proper is the Aubin, Shoreditch, as I found out last year<\/a>). But a lot of the Birkbeck screenings are open to the public – and free, too. Currently there’s a programme of Dickens On Screen, hence the Lean Oliver Twist <\/em>this week. <\/em>Others in the programme are listed here<\/a>, including a 1913 silent version of David Copperfield.\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The cinema is tucked inside Birkbeck’s Gordon Square campus, a row of knocked-through houses that were once home to Virginia Woolf and co. But what’s unexpected is that the architecture around the cinema suddenly transforms from nondescript\u00c2\u00a0white Victorian corridors into a riot of multi-coloured 21st century geometrical shapes:<\/p>\n

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A little research reveals that the cinema was designed by Surface Architects, opened in 2007, and won a RIBA award.<\/p>\n

The highlight of the David Lean Oliver Twist <\/em>for me is the opening five minutes.\u00c2\u00a0The film opens on a desolate moor at night, with the horizon\u00c2\u00a0framed at a sharp geometric angle (much like the Birkbeck Cinema decor). Nothing for a few seconds, then a figure appears in the distance. Close up – it’s a pregnant young woman, alone, possibly lost, walking uncertainly along a muddy track. She sees a light in a building far off, smiles in relief and walks more quickly. Then a terrifying thunderstorm breaks, she’s caught in the rain, clings to a tree, and her face is contorted in pain as the lightning flashes:<\/p>\n

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But she struggles on towards the light, makes it to the building’s front gate and is let in by someone from inside, carrying a lantern. As she disappears within, the camera pans up the building to reveal a sign in the wrought iron… “PARISH WORKHOUSE”.<\/p>\n

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It’s such a perfect opening. And this whole sequence is entirely\u00c2\u00a0wordless.\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>It’s not in the novel, strictly speaking, based instead on a suggestion by Lean’s wife Kay Welsh (who plays Nancy in the film). But Dickens would surely approve. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was writing a story that would become not just a classic, but a myth, <\/em>so a big mythical opening is called for.\u00c2\u00a0In fact, any version of\u00c2\u00a0Oliver Twist<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0that begins with Oliver’s mother-to-be staggering to get to safety is taking its cue from Lean. It also has echoes of Yeats’s line about something ‘slouching toward Bethlehem to be born’.<\/p>\n

(Actually, the beginning of the 2009\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>movie has Captain Kirk’s mother in a similar situation, except in space…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday last: to Birkbeck’s own Cinema to see David Lean’s Oliver Twist\u00c2\u00a0(1948). My first time in the cinema, and the first time I’ve seen – gotten around to, rather – the film. (after a certain age, there’s an awful lot of getting around to\u00c2\u00a0things in one’s life… Have to remember that life is more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[436,435,411,321,434],"class_list":["post-2557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-birkbeck-cinema","tag-david-lean","tag-dickens","tag-films","tag-oliver-twist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2557"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2562,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions\/2562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}