Exceeding our Expectations

What’s the finest Dickens adaptation for the big screen, and director David Lean’s best work before expanding his canvas to epic size? Many argue it’s Great Expectations (1946), which follows the journey of Pip – an orphaned boy played in his youth by Anthony Wager and as an adult by John Mills, who receives a mysterious fortune from an anonymous benefactor. The plot weaves through Pip's encounter with the terrifying escaped convict Abel Magwitch (Finlay Currie) and his introduction to the eccentric, jilted recluse Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt). Pip becomes infatuated with Havisham's cold but beautiful ward, Estella (played by Jean Simmons as a girl and Valerie Hobson as an adult), leading him to leave his humble life with the kind blacksmith Joe Gargery (Bernard Miles) to become a gentleman in London.

To listen to our CineVerse group discussion of Great Expectations, conducted last week, click here.

Viewers continue to marvel at this film’s gothic aesthetic, which evokes a look of German Expressionism and borrows elements from classic horror films, as evidenced by several key set pieces: the graveyard; the haunted house (Ms. Havisham’s dark, decrepit mansion); the grim barrister’s office, decked out with death masks of clients who have been hanged; the London apartment where the stranger Magwitch visits Pip on a dark, stormy night; and the courtroom sentencing chamber where poor wretched souls are condemned to death.

Great Expectations is a textbook example of efficient literary translation, condensing major portions of the novel down to strong singular shots, sequences, and montages. It’s remarkable how much of the story is told visually, without dialogue or exposition. Consider the montage sequence where Mrs. Joe is being cruel to Pip and shouting at him, only instead of hearing the word “Pip,” we hear a shrill horn; or earlier, when Pip imagines words being spoken by the creaking staircase, the hanging dead rabbit, and the cows. The overall sound design is a masterclass, and the howling wind is virtually a character unto itself.

Consider that it’s nearly impossible to stay completely faithful to the source material of a long, sprawling novel when you only have a couple of hours to tell the story. But Lean proved that he can tell this basic story cinematically with this adaptation and again in 1948 with his version of “Oliver Twist.” He said in an interview: “Choose what you want to do in the novel and do it proud. If necessary, cut characters. Don’t keep every character, just take a sniff of each one.”

Lean has a proclivity for carefully composed shots and dramatic visuals within the frame, with the elements within it carefully sorted to attract the eye to the center. Recall how the first half is shown from the perspective of the young Pip via key tracking shots, POV angles, and forced perspective sets (bringing the ceilings down closer to the actors, and using glass mattes to portray the storm-filled sky) via a wide angle lens, all to put you in the shoes of the young protagonist so you see these visuals from his awed, impressionable young point of view.

Yes, Pip is the central character, but he’s like the straight man in a comedy team—here, a character who is often a surrogate for the audience and not the central originator of the action; his personality is not altogether that riveting, and while Mills looks and personifies the part, he’s the least interesting of all the significant roles. The

Instead, this tale’s strength lies in its colorful ensemble of personalities, who have such a strong influence on Pip’s life, as brought to life by one of the finest supporting casts in any British film. Hunt is unforgettable as the skeletal, vengeful Miss Havisham, while a young Simmons captures Estella’s early cruelty with chilling poise and a preview of the stunning beauty she would exude as an adult actress. Currie brings a powerful, rugged intensity to Magwitch, standing in stark contrast to Miles, who portrays the down-to-earth brother-in-law. The supporting cast is bolstered by Alec Guinness in his witty cinematic debut as Herbert Pocket and Francis L. Sullivan, whose arresting presence as the lawyer Mr. Jaggers is pitch-perfect.

Any iteration of Great Expectations focuses on the story’s key themes – high ambitions, self-advancement, and personal reinvention – and Lean’s take is no exception. Pip and those around him have “great expectations” about his future. Ultimately, class, money, and social promotion prove less important to him than conscience, loyalty, compassion, and love, as evidenced by how disillusioned Pip is by his dreams of becoming a gentleman; he feels unsatisfied by the achievement. He learns, as do we, that a person’s real worth is through his good deeds, faithfulness, warmth, and kindness—as taught to him by Magwitch, who has lasting inner value and worth despite being a wanted criminal.

Great Expectations is also concerned, of course, with social inequalities. This tale depicts a class system where the rich live a life of privilege and entitlement, and the poor and miserable don’t have many opportunities. And it’s a rumination on the repercussions of revenge, too. Ms. Havisham’s plan to groom Estella to be her avenging avatar on men, because she was jilted at the altar, ultimately backfires, and the old woman dies a horrible death in the decrepit cage of her own making.

The next time you have a rewatch, pay attention to the motif of doubles prevalent in the film. (Spoilers) Two women die (Ms. Havisham and Mrs. Joe), two escaped convicts, two benefactor candidates (Magwitch and Jaggers), and two adults who aim to shape Pip according to their wishes (Ms. Havisham and Magwitch).

This film features a more romantic, idealized ending than the original novel. (Spoilers) That denouement has Pip, who, remaining single, briefly sees Estella in London; after becoming Bentley Drummle's widow, she has remarried. That conclusion appealed to Dickens due to its originality: "[the] winding up will be away from all such things as they conventionally go." Yet Dickens revised the ending for publication so that Pip now meets Estella in the ruins of Satis House. Dickens also changed the last sentence from "I saw the shadow of no parting from her" to "I saw no shadow of another parting from her" for the 1868 edition of the novel.

Similar works

• David Copperfield (1935)
• A Tale of Two Cities (1935)
• Wuthering Heights (1939)
• Rebecca (1940)
• Jane Eyre (1943)
• Gaslight (1944)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
• Oliver Twist (1948)
• The Heiress (1949)
• Sunset Boulevard (1950)
• Scrooge (1951)

Other films by David Lean

• Blithe Spirit (1945)
• Brief Encounter (1945)
• Oliver Twist (1948)
• The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
• Doctor Zhivago (1965)
• Ryan's Daughter (1970)
• A Passage to India (1984)