DICKENS FILMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 5 (Supplement)

DICKENS FILMS.

NOVELS FOR THE SCREEN. ELSTREE AND HOLLYWOOD. OPPORTUNITIES DISCUSSED. A member for 32 of its 33 years of existence of the Dickens Fellowship and editor for many years past of "The Dickensian," Mr. Walter Dexter recently discussed with a representative of the London "Observer" the possibilities of the various Dickens films now under consideration in Hollywood and Elstree. He talked of Hollywood's "David Copperfield." "I think," he said, "that the American comedian Fields, will be an ideal Micawber for an American audience —and possibly a very good one for an English audience as well. Our English comedian, W. H. Berry, might have been the ideal Micawiver for anywhere in the world, and I believe he has always thought of playing the part; but he was not free to make the journey to Hollywood. Mr. Hugh Walpole, who is working on the spot in Hollywood, is said to have spoken extremely highly of Fields. '

"The British company which has just finished 'The Old Curiosity Shop,' has been able to do something that was certainly not done in the American version of 'Great Expectations' —did not confine itself to a few characters, but handled a multitude of them, and made something vivid and individual out of each. Margaret Kennedy did the film-transcript of the story, and it was made by Thomas Bentley, who is himself a great Dickens man.

Good Film Characters. "Dickens characters should certainly be suitable for film characters. They are always a little 'larger than life' — as are people on the screen. And so many of them are in the nature of caricature —on the fine side of caricature. Dickens should also be suitable for the screen for another reason—he always

worked on a large and crowded canvas. The medium of the film can give him this —where the stage, of course, can't. The American 'Great Expectations' seemed to me, with minor faults, to be very good. On the whole a great deal of the fine drama of the book came through. "It is interesting to recall, now that a film-vogue seems to be coming for Dickens, how almost incredibly popular he once was on the stage ? This is now almost forgotten; and it was never

through plays that he wrote himself. But, about the 'forties of last century he used to write a Christmas story every year; the story would be seized on, dramatised immediately, put on the stage the next week, and would be running simultaneously sometimes in four and five and six London theatres . . 'The Battle of Life, , 'The Christmas Carol,' 'The Cricket on the Hearth,' were all done in this way. "Ho never received royalties for this — and it was one of the troubles of Dickens , life that he never got royalties. But he never seems to have stopped the plays. Copyright laws were vague, and he probably thought the extra sale of the stories and the advertisement that was given him made it worth while. More Popular on Screen. "Other Dickens dramatisations on the stage have always been successful. 'Poor Jo,' the stage version of 'Bleak House,' held for a long time the record run of any play in London. "It will be interesting if the new medium —the screen—finds that it can get equally good material from Dickens. It should be able to. His novels were, in a sense, scenarios. Only two of them, 'Great Expectations' and. 'The Tale of Two Cities,' dealt with cloee-knit, dramatic, coherent plots. All the rest of them have six stories going simultaneously. They are full of little scenes, characters, incidents which hold your attention. But even Dickens himself was always liable to forget for long periods together what it was all about. "There ie the screen's chance. The screen, with its possibilities of endless small scenes and innumerable characters —possibilities that the stage has not got —might be able to make Dickens even more popular than he has been in his time on the stage."