If they added a few songs, this could easily
be a Bollywood film with all of its twist and turns and a multitude of coincidences
- and a happy ending. Another serial by Charles Dickens, his third novel
was a doozy. After watching the film I read a plot summary of the book and
was exhausted by the end. No wonder they published this in serial form. Once
a month an episode would come out. It is all rather wonderful and perhaps
some day I will have to watch the 1982 TV mini-series with Roger Rees that
was such a huge hit when it came out. But probably not the book. This film
feels slightly choppy and a bit short-changed as so much happens with much
of it feeling like it needed to be more fleshed out. Still there is only
so much you can squeeze into a film and they cover a lot - perhaps too much
to the detriment of it.
Produced by the great studio of Ealing that made all those wonderful British
comedies in the 1940s and 50s such as The Lavender Hill Mob, Kind Hearts
and Coronets and Passport to Pimlico. This one goes back and forth between
comedy and drama though shifts to 100% drama in the final third. Top billing
goes to Cedrick Hardwicke as the evil uncle but there is a large cast with
Derek Bond as the title character, Stanley Holloway as the theatrical impresario
and James Hayter who I just saw in The Pickwick Papers as jolly twins - most
of the rest are unfamiliar to me but they are all terrific in that Dickensian
way.
Dickens created drama through misery. And the alleviating of it through either
luck or hard work. Nicholas, his sister and mother find themselves in poverty
when their father dies bankrupt leaving them with nothing. They turn to their
wealthy uncle Ralph for help. He is a miserly miserable man who makes his
living on the hardships of others - a money lender. But he helps with conditions.
Nicholas has to go to Yorkshire to teach at a school for young children while
he puts up the mother and daughter in a small house in a bad part of town.
He has other ideas for the pretty daughter (Sally Ann Howes). The school
turns out to be a hellhole for cast off children that the parents want nothing
to do with.
Nicholas leaves eventually after thrashing the owner and takes a young boy
with him. They join a theater play group but back in London the uncle uses
the sister as bait to men. Nicholas rushes back to put an end to that. And
much much more. All crammed into 108 minutes. Everything is neatly tied up
by the end and all the coincidences are no longer needed to propel the plot.
