*Special Guest: Prof. John O. Jordan, Dickens Scholar (2/16-2/27/09) [ Edited ]

[Peppermill]

I believe Andrew Davies also did the Sense and Sensibility, which we just watched, with some controversy?

Andrew Davies on Sense and Sensibility

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/austen/davies.html

Here Andrew Davies himself talks about some of his adaptions to S&S!  (I missed this before -- I found it very enlightening. The overwrite that comes up before talking specifically about S&S says that Davies is known for his invented scenes.  He talks also about his changes to the characters of the men and is quite willing to critique Austen's writing of them in S&S.)

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dulcinea3 wrote:

Hopefully it will become better known once it is shown on Masterpiece!  I will be reading it for the first time, which I am really looking forward to (I will also be reading The Old Curiosity Shop for the first time).  And I believe that Little Dorrit will be a five-part presentation, which should give them enough time for a much more thorough treatment of it (by Andrew Davies, who did such a good job with the six-part Pride and Prejudice).

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Message Edited by Peppermill on 02-18-2009 11:05 AM

[Laurel]

That's the production we'll be watching here beginning March 29, Choisya. I have heard really good things about it from correspondents in England and Ireland. I'll be reading the book for the first time soon.

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Choisya wrote:

The BBC recently did an excellent series on this novel.  Here are some amusing video-clips about the production which I hope can soon be seen in the US. 

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[dulcinea3]

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Peppermill wrote:

I believe Andrew Davies also did the Sense and Sensibility, which we just watched, with some controversy?

Andrew Davies on Sense and Sensibility

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/austen/davies.html

Here Andrew Davies himself talks about some of his adaptions to S&S!  (I missed this before -- I found it very enlightening. The overwrite that comes up before talking specifically about S&S says that Davies is known for his invented scenes.  He talks also about his changes to the characters of the men and is quite willing to critique Austen's writing of them in S&S.)

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dulcinea3 wrote:

Hopefully it will become better known once it is shown on Masterpiece!  I will be reading it for the first time, which I am really looking forward to (I will also be reading The Old Curiosity Shop for the first time).  And I believe that Little Dorrit will be a five-part presentation, which should give them enough time for a much more thorough treatment of it (by Andrew Davies, who did such a good job with the six-part Pride and Prejudice).

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Message Edited by Peppermill on 02-18-2009 11:05 AM

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Yes, Pepper, that's right.  He also did the versions of Northanger Abbey and Emma, which were also shown on PBS during their Austen series.

He has actually done many of the classics adaptations we have seen on PBS and A&E, such as Middlemarch, Wives and Daughters, He Knew He Was Right, and Bleak House.

Message Edited by dulcinea3 on 02-18-2009 12:31 PM

[JohnP51]

Hello Professor Jordan. I mentioned the music in another thread. It's horrible. As I mentioned, it is more appropriate for a movie of "Tom Sawyer" than "Oliver Twist". All I can think of is they did that due to money constraints as it sounds more like canned freeware techno wav files than music written and performed for the movie.

Had I not read the book, I might enjoy the movie (with the music muted). But as a fan of Dickens, this production doesn't do Mr. Dickens justice. And if the movie was produced to appeal to a younger generation raised on Hip Hop and one hit wonder pop singers, that further does Mr. Dickens an injustice.

I'll watch the second part online to see where they are going with it but I still think the movie "Oliver!" starring Shani Wallace, Oliver Reed and Ron Moody, comes closer to what Dickens was trying to portray than this current production does.

Message Edited by JohnP51 on 02-18-2009 12:39 PM

[Choisya]

Good.   My only complaint about it was that the BBC decided, unusually, to split it into 14 small episodes instead of, say, 8 longer ones.  I found I had no sooner 'got into' the episode than it ended.  There were quite a few complaints about this.   

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Laurel wrote:
That's the production we'll be watching here beginning March 29, Choisya. I have heard really good things about it from correspondents in England and Ireland. I'll be reading the book for the first time soon.

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Choisya wrote:

The BBC recently did an excellent series on this novel.  Here are some amusing video-clips about the production which I hope can soon be seen in the US. 

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[Laurel]

We'll get to start out with a 120-minute program and then four weekly 90-minute programs. Much better.

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Choisya wrote:

Good.   My only complaint about it was that the BBC decided, unusually, to split it into 14 small episodes instead of, say, 8 longer ones.  I found I had no sooner 'got into' the episode than it ended.  There were quite a few complaints about this.   

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Laurel wrote:
That's the production we'll be watching here beginning March 29, Choisya. I have heard really good things about it from correspondents in England and Ireland. I'll be reading the book for the first time soon.

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Choisya wrote:

The BBC recently did an excellent series on this novel.  Here are some amusing video-clips about the production which I hope can soon be seen in the US. 

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[John_Jordan]

Yes, Everyman is correct. Little Dorrit, which will screen in a few weeks, is largely set in the Marshalsea prison. Dickens based much of those scenes on his father's experience in debtors' prison, and the figure of William Dorrit (the "Father of the Marshalsea," as he is called) is clearly based on Dickens's father, John Dickens.

[John_Jordan]

I don't think that Dickens's parents were trying to protect young Charles from any social stigma by not bringing him into the prison along with them. I think they wanted him to keep his position at the blacking factory, since that was the only source of income the family had at that time.

And while it's true that Little Dorrit, the protagonist of the novel of that name, is female, I don't think that the explanation for her gender can be attributed simply to a wish on Dickens's  part to distance himself from the Marshalsea experience. He certainly remained conflicted, ashamed even, about that piece of his past, but in Little Dorrit he wanted to explore the father-daughter relationship, and that, I believe, more than any autobiographical explanation, accounts for her gender.

[John_Jordan]

John, I agree with you about the music. Let's see what we think after viewing part Two. I've heard excellent things from friends in the UK about the Little Dorrit adaptation and am looking forward to seeing it.

[Everyman]

Did John Dickens hold the same sort of respected and almost leadership role in Marlshalsea as William Dorrit does in the book?

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John_Jordan wrote:
Yes, Everyman is correct. Little Dorrit, which will screen in a few weeks, is largely set in the Marshalsea prison. Dickens based much of those scenes on his father's experience in debtors' prison, and the figure of William Dorrit (the "Father of the Marshalsea," as he is called) is clearly based on Dickens's father, John Dickens.

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[Choisya]

There are a couple of interesting comments about John Dickens in this Guardian article, one of which is a description of him as the self deceiving Father of the Marshalsea which implies that although he may of thought of himself as the 'father' there, this was part of his self deception. The other comment is that the well known saying 'If a man had twenty pounds a year and only spent nineteen.......' was  made by John Dickens to his son when he was sent to the Marshalsea and was later used for Mr Micawber in Pickwick Papers.  Finally the journalist writes about the serialisation of Little Dorrit:  'The BBC has dramatised a fable for our times, obsessed with bejewelled celebrities, as the fever drives the stock markets down.....  

NB:  Please do not rank this or any of my posts.  Thankyou.  C.   

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John_Jordan wrote:
Yes, Everyman is correct. Little Dorrit, which will screen in a few weeks, is largely set in the Marshalsea prison. Dickens based much of those scenes on his father's experience in debtors' prison, and the figure of William Dorrit (the "Father of the Marshalsea," as he is called) is clearly based on Dickens's father, John Dickens.

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Message Edited by Choisya on 02-21-2009 06:30 AM

[Everyman]

Prof. Jordan:  If you had a chance to see the Oliver Twist either broadcast or on line, I wonder whether you have any comments on the changes they made in it.  Do you feel that they were successful in presenting the substance of the book to those who might not have read it?  Or did the changes deviate from Dickens's work to such an extent that they represented a false message from that which Dickens was trying to present? 

[John_Jordan]

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Everyman wrote:

Did John Dickens hold the same sort of respected and almost leadership role in Marlshalsea as William Dorrit does in the book?

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John_Jordan wrote:
Yes, Everyman is correct. Little Dorrit, which will screen in a few weeks, is largely set in the Marshalsea prison. Dickens based much of those scenes on his father's experience in debtors' prison, and the figure of William Dorrit (the "Father of the Marshalsea," as he is called) is clearly based on Dickens's father, John Dickens.

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 John Dickens certainly had his own share of grandiosity, but Dickens greatly exaggerates this quality in his characterization of William Dorrit.

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[John_Jordan]

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Everyman wrote:
Prof. Jordan:  If you had a chance to see the Oliver Twist either broadcast or on line, I wonder whether you have any comments on the changes they made in it.  Do you feel that they were successful in presenting the substance of the book to those who might not have read it?  Or did the changes deviate from Dickens's work to such an extent that they represented a false message from that which Dickens was trying to present? 

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Yes, I did see both parts of the broadcast, and, despite the changes that were made in plot details and characterizations, I think the new adaptation does a pretty good job of conveying the spirit of the book. I'm not one of those people who demands that every film or TV adaptation try to meet some standard of "fidelity" to the original. Often the deviations from the original are, in effect, new interpretations and have interest in their own right. There were lots of stage adaptations of Oliver during the 19th century, and scholars often study them to learn what readers and audiences of that time took from the book. The same holds true for 20th and 21st-century adaptations.

Two big changes that I noticed in the new production were in Mr. Brownlow, who is much more severe in this version than in the book, and in Oliver, who is braver and more active than he appears in the novel. Of course, there were other changes in the plot and in the family relationships. Making Monks into the sinister would-be lover of Rose Maylie is a total invention and helps create a kind of parallel between her and Nancy, who has a sinister lover as well. Dodger gets a bigger role at the end than he has in the book. Instead of getting arrested and transported, he stays loyal to Fagin  and appears to turn his back on the life of criminality in order to go off with Bull's Eye, Sikes's dog, to an unknown future--sort of like Huck Finn lighting out for the territory at the end of that novel.

Adapters of Oliver always have trouble with the fact that the novel has two "good" families: Brownlow's and the Maylies. To save time, either they must get combined (as they were here) or else one gets dropped out, usually the Maylies. Combining them and making Monks into the evil suitor of Rose adds another twist to the plot. I thought the Sikes & Nancy relationship was especially well done.

[Peppermill]

Professor Jordan -- did the screenwriter for this film version of Oliver Twist adequately wrestle with Dickens's text? 

My sense was that he did not, that he used it as a vast resource for a good story, good entertainment, but without a lot of integrity about extracting the deeper strengths of the original.  But, I would appreciate hearing the viewpoints of a scholar of Dickens, because I know that while I sense such and could name a few examples, I also know that I could not name or rank those "deep strengths."

(One that did strike me that was reasonably well done was the favoritism shown to O.T. versus the Dodger and how that affected each of them; on the other hand, I missed something similar to Polanski's staging of Oliver visiting Fagan in jail, i.e., the mutual humanity these two characters extended each other, but sadly curtailed or perverted.)

Pepper

[MaryE935]

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John_Jordan wrote:

 Dodger gets a bigger role at the end than he has in the book. Instead of getting arrested and transported, he stays loyal to Fagin  and appears to turn his back on the life of criminality in order to go off with Bull's Eye, Sikes's dog, to an unknown future--sort of like Huck Finn lighting out for the territory at the end of that novel.

 I thought the Sikes & Nancy relationship was especially well done.

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Thank you, Prof. Jordan, for your perspective on the film.  However, I had a different interpretation of Dodger at the end.  I felt that the filmmakers implied that Dodger was going to become a new version of Sikes- the way he swaggered through the crowd holding the dog's leash, bullying his way forward while yelling at the people, seemed to mirror the scenes of Sikes walking through the streets earlier in the film.  Could this be their intention?

I agree the Sikes and Nancy relationship was compelling-  excellent job by the actors.  Of course, I also think it is the most interesting part of the book. 

[dulcinea3]

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MaryE935 wrote:

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John_Jordan wrote:

 Dodger gets a bigger role at the end than he has in the book. Instead of getting arrested and transported, he stays loyal to Fagin  and appears to turn his back on the life of criminality in order to go off with Bull's Eye, Sikes's dog, to an unknown future--sort of like Huck Finn lighting out for the territory at the end of that novel.

 I thought the Sikes & Nancy relationship was especially well done.

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Thank you, Prof. Jordan, for your perspective on the film.  However, I had a different interpretation of Dodger at the end.  I felt that the filmmakers implied that Dodger was going to become a new version of Sikes- the way he swaggered through the crowd holding the dog's leash, bullying his way forward while yelling at the people, seemed to mirror the scenes of Sikes walking through the streets earlier in the film.  Could this be their intention?

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I had exactly the same reaction to the ending - that Dodger was going to take Sikes' place.  His threats to others in the crowd as soon as he took the dog and started walking were of the same type and similar wording as we had heard from Sikes.

[Everyman]

Nice post, Mary.  I went back to watch that section on line, and I think your interpretation is quite valid.  Which isn't to say that it's necessarily what the filmmakers had in mind, but it seems quite consistent with the film presentation, and is truer to the book, in which Dodger remains part of the criminal class.

And if that wasn't their intent, why would they have Bull's Eye survive instead of dying (my recollection is that he died in the book), and why would he wind up with Dodger, when he had been out in the country and how on earth in reality would we expect him to get back to the city and find one individual person on the street?   

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MaryE935 wrote:

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John_Jordan wrote:

 Dodger gets a bigger role at the end than he has in the book. Instead of getting arrested and transported, he stays loyal to Fagin  and appears to turn his back on the life of criminality in order to go off with Bull's Eye, Sikes's dog, to an unknown future--sort of like Huck Finn lighting out for the territory at the end of that novel.

 I thought the Sikes & Nancy relationship was especially well done.

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Thank you, Prof. Jordan, for your perspective on the film.  However, I had a different interpretation of Dodger at the end.  I felt that the filmmakers implied that Dodger was going to become a new version of Sikes- the way he swaggered through the crowd holding the dog's leash, bullying his way forward while yelling at the people, seemed to mirror the scenes of Sikes walking through the streets earlier in the film.  Could this be their intention?

I agree the Sikes and Nancy relationship was compelling-  excellent job by the actors.  Of course, I also think it is the most interesting part of the book. 

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[ConnieAnnKirk]

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Peppermill wrote:

Professor Jordan -- did the screenwriter for this film version of Oliver Twist adequately wrestle with Dickens's text? 

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Love the phrasing of your question, Pepper!  I'm interested in expanding what you mean by the phrase, "adequately wrestle"?  It suggests the struggle the screenwriter has inherently in moving the literal text (original novel) to a text which can be filmed (screenplay), and it also sugggests that there must be enough ("adequate") work put in to this endeavor to reach some sort of satisfactory goal.   

In one sense, at least one goal was satisfactorily met--a film was, in fact, made from this screenplay, using the literary text as a jumping off point (shall we say). 

Did the screenwriter work hard enough with the original to make a good adaptation?  That sounds like the question this lovely phrase is asking.  It implies another goal beyond the obvious--a film was made--and it sounds like that goal is something that would have to be open to interpretation.   

[Peppermill]

Connie -- I didn't know how to phrase my question any better!

Obviously, there can be no '"answer": only perspectives, insights, reactions, feelings, scholarly assessments,....  It is particularly a scholar's view I sought by posing the question I did.

Having read/listened to the text and watched Polanski's version not long before watching the Masterpiece Theatre, I had an awareness of the a) the richness of this sprawling novel, originally serialized over several months and b) the many choices that would have to be made to create a film version.

But, I am not a careful reader of Dickens -- I have never delved into the structures he has used (e.g., Eman's comment about the comparisons of three couplings), the themes for which he is renowned, the fame on which his reputation rests, the allusions that have been muffled by time, the nuances that please, his characters and their particular idiosyncrasies that make them individuals, ....  

Despite this, my gut reaction to the Masterpiece production was that the screenwriter took a lot of wonderful material and molded it into a good piece of entertainment.  I think that would have been relatively easy to do, given the wealth of material from which there was to draw.  But, was he/she faithful to Dickens, or was the book Oliver Twist given short shrift? Did the changes made mistreat the text, or did they indeed extract and bring forward its essence?  (Recall our discussion on Tess on the impact of deleting the baptism scene -- the screenwriter had clearly considered what he was doing and why. Or the discussion by the screenwriter why he changed the characteristics of the men in Sense and Sensibility.)

Your synopsis of "Did the screenwriter work hard enough with the original to make a good adaptation?"  is a reasonable one, but I think I was trying to convey something a bit different with "wrestle" -- more a living with the text long enough, lovingly enough to honor its integrity versus using it to expeditiously produce a viable entertainment for 2009 audiences.   

Hope that responds to your inquiry somewhat, Connie?  

Pepper

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ConnieK wrote:

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Peppermill wrote:

Professor Jordan -- did the screenwriter for this film version of Oliver Twist adequately wrestle with Dickens's text? 

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Love the phrasing of your question, Pepper!  I'm interested in expanding what you mean by the phrase, "adequately wrestle"?  It suggests the struggle the screenwriter has inherently in moving the literal text (original novel) to a text which can be filmed (screenplay), and it also sugggests that there must be enough ("adequate") work put in to this endeavor to reach some sort of satisfactory goal.   

In one sense, at least one goal was satisfactorily met--a film was, in fact, made from this screenplay, using the literary text as a jumping off point (shall we say). 

Did the screenwriter work hard enough with the original to make a good adaptation?  That sounds like the question this lovely phrase is asking.  It implies another goal beyond the obvious--a film was made--and it sounds like that goal is something that would have to be open to interpretation.   

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