"Great Expectations"

A lonely foggy marsh. A boy struggles against the wind; in his hand, a few pitiful flowers. In a deserted churchyard, he kneels to place the flowers on his mother’s grave. Suddenly, a huge nightmarish hand grabs him, pulls his jacket up to choke him. Almost paralyzed with fear, he looks up into a brutish face. An escaped convict in leg-irons demands to know where he lives. There, he points, with my sister and the blacksmith. The convict, shivering with cold, delivers a sinister warning: Bring me food and a file, and if you don’t come…I have a way of finding a boy, wherever he hides, even if he’s asleep, I’ll come for him and pull out his heart and liver…

What you sense, in the opening scene of David Lean’s 1946 version of Great Expectations, is a fear you remember from your own childhood. The boy runs home through fog and wind to the modest house where he lives with a harsh, abusive sister and her gentle, guileless husband. He huddles in bed, his heart fast-beating, and he can still hear the convict’s threat. Out of sheer panic, he’s forced to go back bringing food and a file to save the convict’s life.

Yet somehow, between him and this ugly creature, is a sense of concern…even compassion, both from the boy and–when the convict is caught–from the convict, who exonerates the boy who might be accused of stealing the food. And here begins David Lean’s masterwork, a beautiful film true to Dickens’s novel of a poor boy raised to wealth and position by a benefactor he does not know but suspects, and this mistake, a critical error, drives the action of the film.

The wonder of Dickens is that he draws his characters so sharply that they remain forever with you. You know Scrooge. You know David Copperfield. And David Lean, who has been faithful to the book, creates a Pip and a Miss Havisham who will stay with you forever.

This horror of a woman, Miss Havisham, years before, was deserted on her wedding day. She had stopped the clocks. Mice nibble at the remnants of her wedding cake. Her wedding gown is in tatters. This disappointed woman brings the boy Pip to play with her adopted daughter. The beautiful Estella has been raised to break the hearts of men. Try to forget the scene where Pip, grown and now a gentleman, accuses Miss Havisham of having broken his heart. This mad old woman clasps her hands to her breast. What have I done? And a bit of burning wood from the fire ignites the hem of her gown…

What Lean creates out of the novel is emotion: a boy’s dream in despair, a sense of love and concern for the ugly beast of a convict who risked his life to help the boy who saved him on that lonely marsh, a compassion for the kindly blacksmith…and on and on…emotions that, along with his wonderful characterization, even in a plainly romantic novel, touch your heart.

And then comes the remake. The word alone gives me a shudder. Go ahead. Make a film built on the general idea of a Dickens novel, but please don’t do what they did to another great classic, The Haunting (1963) from the novel by Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House). They remade the scenery and a couple of plot points but left out the emotion, the heart of the film–the elements that made it a classic.

In this great film, Pip is played by John Mills (of Hobson’s Choice), Miss Havisham by the stage actress Martita Hunt, and, most intriguing, Pip’s friend by a very young Alec Guiness.

Yes, Gweneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke, but…it pains me to describe it. Take the first scene. A boy walking in shallow water, sketching little fish. Suddenly, up from the bottom rises the convict who has been…come on, lying in the water waiting for him? The warning, yes, bring me food and a cutter…but no relationship has been developed. For the boy…okay, an adventure. And come on…Miss Havisham? The wonderful Anne Bancroft in possibly her worst role ever. She went bonkers when she was deserted at the altar…but wait, this isn’t turn of the century when desertion meant overwhelming despair. She’s looney tunes in great clothes and expensive wigs. A goodlooking rich old gal? They’d be lining up for her. No more said, except the terrible waste of Hank Azaria.

What makes a classic? It hits a nerve; it rings true. The story, although sometimes fantastic, touches something real in our experience. Our deepest fears. Our private hearts. Something in our hopes and expectations. You don’t bring a convict out of shallow water and then drag him back in the last scene, saying, hey, it’s me who made your career.

Please, you guys in charge…you have all this talent available, all that money…yes, you want a new audience to experience the wonder of Dickens…but do it right or leave the classics alone.