Oliver! - A Discussion

[ChiChi]

I have come around to Oliver! various times throughout my life. First when I was ten and my Uncle took me to see a regional production and then bought me the cassette of the Broadway Cast Recording that following Chanukah. I've always loved the score.

I recently picked up a record of the London cast and after listening to it several times (it is not my favorite recording) I decided to read the book and watch several of the Oliver Twist adaptations.

I really like the story, but clearly the musical brightens things up, as is understandable, because it's a very dark story.

Does anyone else have thoughts on the piece and how it was given the musical treatment?

I should also add that I am not fond of the movie of Oliver! I like an Oliver who really sings and I wasn't fond of many of the arrangements.

[Jordan Catalano]

I wanted to respond but I know how you feel about us "Legends".

[ChiChi]

I thought I'd posted this on the Broadway board. But I guess since it's branching away from just musical it can stay here. Sorry.

[Jordan Catalano]

Am I allowed to respond?

[TheatreDiva90016]

No.

Not until you give me the contact information on the guy in your avatar.

[ChiChi]

Sounds like you're the one keeping it going now.

[ChiChi]

Hey Diva! you may want the phone number of his, but I just want a print of yours to put in my new dining room!!! LOL

[Reginald Tresilian]

I am such an idiot sometimes. I'd typed out a lovely detailed response, listing several favorite adaptations--and then realized they were all "David Copperfield."

So, if we move on to "DC" at any point, I'm ready.

[ChiChi]

Why not talk about David Copperfield? I posted the topic on the wrong board. So why not???

[CarlosAlberto]

Wasnt David Copperfield married to Claudia Schiffer?

[Wynbish]

I'm a sucker for an Oom Pah Pah

[ChiChi]

I love "It's a fine Life" it raises my spirits when I am low.

[CarlosAlberto]

The scene where Bill beats the life out of Nancy always creeped me the fvck out when I was a kid. It shouldn't have really. I grew up in the South Bronx from the age of 7 and we saw a lot of that sh!t back in the day.

[henrikegerman]

Have to disagree with you about the movie. It is the greatest movie of a stage musical. It moves, and is directed by a master with just as much attention to telling the story in pure cinematic terms as it is to presenting the musical numbers with vigor and panache. The cast is uniformly excellent and the pacing impeccable.

[trentsketch]

I love the novel and the musical. Yes, the musical makes it a more cheerful experience. I still wouldn't call it happy. Most of the featured characters are miserable and a lot of bad things happen to those children in the show. Not to mention poor Nancy. I mean, you have to keep her death in the story for it to be Oliver, but it's the only real act of violence that makes the cut. The only characters they pull in for the musical that aren't resolved/complete are the Sowerberrys (though how they're used means they don't need the full story to feel complete) and Bet (who isn't even really needed since she's just another girl for I'd Do Anything).

The novel, though, is probably my favorite piece of Realism. I remember having a rather heated discussion with a professor after he cited it as the worst example of Realism and the only reason why he refused to teach Charles Dickens. So what does he go with for college freshman? Eugenie Grandet by Balzac. Snore. Talk about boring, overly detailed Realism.

I wore through three separate VHS tapes of the movie version growing up. Still a huge fan. It's just so...big. The choreography and sets are fantastic. I can forgive some poor casting when the overall product is that polished.

[tazber]

I also love the novel and the musical.

I think the book is well structured and the score is insanely tuneful. I've never seen a bad production.

I love the movie too. Almost everyone I know points to this as being the single worst blunder by the Academy Awards, but I think it absolutely deserved the award.

[best12bars]

Taz, I don't know where you've heard it was a blunder. It received 11 Oscar nominations (the most of any film that year by three) and won five awards, plus a special sixth award for Onna White's choreography.

It took in $77.5 million worldwide, received terrific reviews, and film critic Pauline Kael praised it as being one of the few film adaptations of a stage musical that is superior to the original production.

I agree with you that it deserved the award for Best Picture.

Actually, it's one of my favorite films of all time.

[Jon]

In the original production, Nancy's murder was slightly restaged for matinees (when young kids would be there) to make it less explicitly violent. it was far upstage and dimly lit.

I saw it when I was 5, and I remember Bill taking Oliver and being chased, but I really don't remember him killing Nancy.

[trentsketch]

tazber, I can explain the worst winner ever argument really easily. 1968 was a fantastic year for films. Yet what is arguably one of the greatest films of all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey, was not nominated for Best Picture. The Academy gave it two key nominations--director and screenplay--and an additional two technical nominations but that doesn't satisfy the hindsight crowd. They'd be calling Rachel, Rachel, The Lion in the Winter, Funny Girl, or Romeo & Juliet the worst winner ever had Oliver! been bested. It's not that Oliver! is a bad film. It's that a more ambitious film, better remembered and more studied, was bested by it at the Oscars. Mind you, the film was ambitious enough in its musical staging and choreography that Onna White was given an honorary award for the choreography.

This is why people now try to explain away the win as the safe choice (G-rated musical the first year R-ratings existed, but that's not true because Funny Girl was also a G-rated musical nominated for best picture) or for "more is better"(again, Funny Girl is another big musical with costumes and elaborate sets and the real spectacle film that year was Romeo & Juliet with the color palettes and crazy period costuming), but Oliver! was a big hit with great reviews. People loved it. The critics loved it. The Academy love it. No conspiracy theory needed.

[best12bars]

I'll tell you another reason why "Oliver!"'s win for Best Picture wasn't celebrated or promoted (endlessly with much gloating) back then or even now.

It was actually in independent foreign film, produced entirely by Romulus Productions in the UK.

Columbia Pictures acquired the distribution rights in the U.S., but "Oliver!" is not a studio film or a product of "Hollywood" in any sense of the terms.

That's hardly unheard of today, but in 1968, it was still pretty rare. (Even the ground-breaking "2001" was entirely funded and produced by MGM.) "Oliver!" as successful as it was, is still very much an "indy" movie made in another country.

So after its win, there weren't a lot of "Hollywood studio boys" patting themselves on the back and setting up future deals on the heels of their big studio win, because basically few in the Hollywood community had anything to do with it, other than securing distribution.

[ChiChi]

It's one of my favorite musicals. I just don't favor the film.

[best12bars]

I like the stage musical a lot. I think the movie is better.

[GavestonPS]

I didn't like the film as a kid, but I think I was so in love with Georgia Brown's voice, I never gave Shani Wallace a chance. I've seen the latter on stage since and she was quite lovely. So if henrik feels so strongly, I need to give the movie another look.

Although I memorized the LP, I didn't see a stage production until the West End revival in 1979. My memory of it is that it was quite a bit darker than either the film or my expectations. (Yes, I had read the novel.)

I did think the book was structured so that a lot of plot events had to be wrapped up too quickly in the last 20 minutes, but it was appropriately dark and even frightening. (I was 25 by then.)

[CarlosAlberto]

Yeah, those folks at Columbia sure went out of their way not to brag about the film's mulitple Oscar wins.

[CarlosAlberto]

Hold on, wait! Is that a bowl in Oliver's delicate little hands. Oh no, it's just one of the SIX OSCARS the film won that year!

[best12bars]

Above all else (meaning the excellent cast, the brilliant choreography, camerawork, and staging, and the enormous production numbers), the one thing you can't beat in any stage production is the cinematic direction of Sir Carol Reed.

He was a master of nail-biting suspense, along the lines of Hitchcock.

He added elements of tension and increased the "action scenes" that primarily occupy the ends of both acts, (Oliver being chased as a pickpocket, and the story's climax with Bill Sykes kidnapping Oliver.)

You just can't do on stage what he was able to do with closeups, long shots, cutaways, masterful timing and editing. It really is a MOVIE at that point, and no matter how good the stage direction is in a theatre, it will never equal that narrative cinematic intensity.

Also, the shift of "Oom Pah Pah" to help build the tension in Act II, can't be beat on any stage, because it doesn't exist in the play that way. The song is nothing but a throwaway bar number to open Act II. A real waste.

Still the stage show has its wonderful charms and can be dark and moody and meaningful. It's the one show I ever did as a musical director, and I enjoyed the experience immensely.

But the film is a masterpiece.