Theoretical approaches to Dickens on film: The cinematic interpretation of Charles Dickens' novels

Treating film adaptations as critical "readings" of literary texts, this study argues that film adaptation provides a unique tool for envisioning the critical potential of literature. Cinematic adaptations dramatize the diverse interpretive possibilities that contribute to a literary text's continuing vitality in various cultures and historical periods. And because criticism discovers properties not only of the text, but also of the critic, critical interpretations of literature on film can reveal the reading processes and interpretive strategies of filmmakers and audiences, as influenced by their peculiar social and historical circumstances, allowing us to visualize how a text is continually de- and re-constructed through the interpretations of different readers and how this ongoing process of interpretation is culturally mediated.; To demonstrate this cinematic "reading" process, this study analyzes selected film versions of two of Charles Dickens' novels, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, discovering each adaptation's critical approach to the original text and demonstrating how that approach contributes to our understanding of the particular novel, features of Dickens' fiction as a whole, and the criticism of Dickens' works in different sociological settings. The four film versions examined are by three noted directors whose adaptations dramatize the interpretation of Dickens in specific cultural milieus---David Lean's Gothic/fairy-tale versions of Oliver Twist (1947) and Great Expectations (1946) address the needs of a British audience in the midst of post-World War II reconstruction by emphasizing both the horror and the hope in Dickens' works; Clive Donner's sociological critique of Oliver Twist (1982) responds to issues of poverty and social responsibility prominent in Thatcherite England through examining the politics of Dickens' novel; and Alfonso Cuaron's 1998 postmodern approach to Great Expectations provides a coming-of-age tale for the 1990s "Generation X" by redefining the quest for self in Dickens' text from a late-twentieth-century American perspective.; The study concludes that examination of these cinematic "essays" and of other filmic "re-visions" of Dickens' texts can promote our critical engagement with the literary originals and enhance our comprehension of the cultural power of Dickens' work by demonstrating how Dickens is "read" in a different medium and under varying cultural circumstances.