All language subtitles for Classic.Movies.The.Story.Of.S05E01.Classic.Movies.Great.Expectations.1080p.NOW.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

'My father's family name being Pirrip

and my Christian name Philip,

my infant tongue
could make of both names

nothing longer or more explicit
than... Pip.

So, I called myself Pip,

and came to be called Pip.'

There has never been a more perfect
marriage of director and material

than David Lean's 1946 adaptation
of Great Expectations.

Indeed, he was often called
a visual novelist.

Published in 1861, Charles Dickens'
novel tells the story of Pip,

whose humble expectations
are transformed

by his encounter
with escaped convict Magwitch

and the bitter, jilted Miss Havisham.

Would you agree
that Great Expectations

is the perfect marriage of director
and source material?

I think so.
And I think it's critical

that it comes at this point
in David Lean's career.

Both Dickens and David Lean

are exploring, I guess,
aspects of the British story.

I mean, they... throughout their
careers both have looked at class,

they've looked at money,
and they've looked at

the interior
of the human experience.

So it's what do people think, feel,

and what are the blockages
that are both social and internal?

And Dickens
is able to do that as a novelist

through the interior monologue.

What Lean is doing increasingly
across the course of his career

and at this point
with Great Expectations

probably for the first time
really fusing it,

is he's able to tell the interior
monologue of a character

through the way he shoots them,
with visuals, with representations,

with symbols and with leitmotifs,
to where he finally hits that point

where he's discovering
and uncovering character.

Keep still, you little devil,

or I'll cut your throat.
No, sir, no!

Tell us your name. Quick!

Pip. Pip, sir.

Great Expectations
directed by David Lean

marks the first time that Lean would
adapt source material from Dickens.

And while Dickens novels had been
adapted for the screen before,

Lean brings something truly special
to this adaptation.

And a lot of it is around the fact
that Lean was a visual storyteller.

And he brings such atmosphere
and such thoughtfulness

to the historical accuracy that it
brings Dickens to life, I think,

for an entirely new generation.

David Lean's film version
of Dickens' Great Expectations,

that he made in 1946,
is a very good example

of two perfect storytellers
collaborating.

Lean hadn't read any Dickens

before he was introduced
to Great Expectations

by a stage adaptation.

And when he saw that, he realised
that there was something about it

that he fully engaged with.

Being a storyteller himself, albeit
a visual one, a cinematic one,

I think that he felt a kind of...
relationship with Dickens.

Let's talk a bit
about the original novel,

because even among Dickens'
great array of novels

it's considered one of his best.
Why is that?

I think one of the things
about Great Expectations

is the story
is... beautifully timeless.

It's about... well, so many things,

but you could boil it down, as
David Lean did, to two big themes.

There's the sort of futility of it
and the eternity of love.

You make the incorrect decision in
love and you can't pull out of it.

That's one doom. The other futility
is trying to change your class.

In British society, you're not
really allowed to move up a class.

That doesn't really happen.
You know,

the entire motif of British sitcoms
is you cannot move up in a class.

So these two are the strongest
themes of the... the novel.

There are lots of other things he
explores, things like poverty,

the trap of poverty, betrayal,
all sorts of other elements,

but those, I think, are
the strongest parts of the story.

Although many people
love Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities,

which preceded Great Expectations,

or they might love
A Christmas Carol,

the thing that's really special
about Great Expectations

is it combines and influences so
many other genres of novel to come.

It's a morality tale. It's the story
of a man's coming of age

from boy to man. It's a story
of rags to riches to rags again.

Great Expectations is relatively
late in Dickens canon,

but it is clearly one of the most
popular books that he ever wrote.

Perhaps only slightly less popular
than A Christmas Carol.

I think the reason
for its popularity,

and it has been adapted
for stage, screen,

and television countless times,

is because it does
so many different things in one.

On the one hand, it is a melodrama
about a young man

seeking his identity, an orphan
who wants to find his true self.

At the same time is a critique
of Victorian society

and the aspirations thereof.

There is a thriller element to it

and there is also
a comic element too.

It's a book that's designed
to be read aloud.

So Dickens would do readings of his
work for money.

He was always desperately broke,

it was an important income source
for him. But other people

would do this later in pubs and bars
because literacy was not universal.

And when you look at the book
from that perspective,

it is this...
almost comedic role of jokes,

of comments, of sideswipes.

It is almost like a stand-up routine
when spoken.

And when put on the page,
it has a lightness to it.

When it explores these very dark
and very complex themes,

it does so with such a joyous
lightness of touch.

Great Expectations,
like most of Dickens' work,

was also released and published
as a serial piece of work,

which means that it has
this episodic quality

throughout its main character
Pip's life.

That means that it kind of lends
itself to many subplots,

to various ensemble characters

who have complex relationships with
our protagonist.

And often that lends itself
to melodrama as well.

And the Victorians loved and lapped
up melodrama.

They loved the story of a child
missing and reunited with a mother.

They loved the story of someone

who discovers their secret
benefactor

was an escaped convict
that they knew all along.

Dickens had an interest
in childhood,

and particularly in orphans.
And he showed that previously

with David Copperfield.
And with this story,

he does have imperilled children,

and children who form
quite meaningful relationships

early in life like Pip and Estella.

And then you watch as those
relationships

develop over a number of years,
really up until their old age,

but you always know that in spite
of the twists and turns

and sort of theatrical things
within these stories

and the surprise twists,
that you will see

a narrative resolution to the
stories of these characters,

even if it's not necessarily
a happy one.

Lean's version
is a triumph of casting.

John Mills as the spirited Pip.

Alec Guinness
as loyal friend Herbert Pocket.

Finlay Currie as Magwitch.

Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham.

And Valerie Hobson as that uncaring
object of Pip's affections,

the cruel Estella.

And it is a triumph of imagery.

Watching Great Expectations,
it is as if the Dickensian world

is being invented before our eyes.

The breathtaking exteriors,
the almost fairy-tale sets,

that indelible sense of place and
time and mystery.

A supreme example
of filmmaking craft,

Great Expectations is a true wonder
of British cinema.

Come along, boy!

Take your hat off!

Great Expectations finds two of our
leading storytellers

at the height of their powers,
David Lean and Charles Dickens.

The author's 13th novel
is one of his greatest achievements.

Adapted 28 times
for stage and screen,

with all its secrets
and devious schemes,

this is both Dickens
richest and arguably darkest work.

It is Lean
who added the possibly happy ending.

Great Expectations
has a very complex plot,

and it involves relationships
between the main characters

which are hidden until the very end.

It's the story of young orphan, Pip,

who is brought up by kindly
blacksmith called Joe Gargery,

who is married to Pip's sister,
who is a bit of a harridan.

And it's the search for...
his own identity,

and Pip's own aspirations
to become a gentleman.

These are the sort of
secret aspirations he has,

because he is, in fact, you know,

living under
fairly common circumstances.

And he finds himself being...

a kind of playmate to a young lady

who is the ward of Miss Havisham.

Miss Havisham is this strange woman

who lives in a large old house
full of cobwebs,

who's been sitting there
in her bridal gown for years

since the day
she was jilted at the altar.

She has invited Pip to come in

and, basically, just be company,
be a sort of companion.

At first he's completely terrified,
but in the process of returning,

he falls in love
with the young ward, Estella.

Estella treats him
really like sort of dirt.

She says, "You are a common boy."
She always calls to him, "Boy!"

And it makes him more aware
of his poor background.

And it's that that triggers
his quest for great expectations,

for some sort of social elevation
and possibly wealth.

And they move around each other
a little bit.

He's still as in love with her
as ever he was,

but her job now, her mission,

is to entrap the hearts
of all the young men of London

And she does so very successfully.
She goes with Pip

to a lot of parties
where she breaks his heart,

- she breaks everyone's heart.
- It's
quite interesting, though, isn't it,

certainly in the film version,
- Estella always warns Pip.
- Yes.

She goes, "Don't love me, because
I will break your heart."Yes.

"Don't.
You know what's gonna happen."

Almost as she's sort of
- warning him off.
- Yeah.

That's almost the very first thing
she says to him when she sees him.

He says, "I remember kissing you."
And she says,

"Well, do not fall in love with me,

because this is what I'm supposed
to do. I'm the assassin.

Do not fall victim to me."
But he can't help himself.

He can't help himself. So she
chooses a man to destroy and marry.

And, of course, that breaks Pip.

And this all happens
around the same time.

The escape... the Magwitch escape
and Estella's marriage

all happen at the same point.

Surprisingly, Lean had not been
an avid reader of Dickens.

He was taken to see a stage
adaptation of Great Expectations

in 1939 starring Alec Guinness.

It was as if he was struck
by lightning.

What a film this would make!

He threw himself
into the author's entire works,

but it had to be Great Expectations.

So in 1939, David Lean

goes to see a stage adaptation
of Great Expectations.

And this particular version
had been considerably sculpted

and cut down from the novel
and he found it brilliant.

It had been written and cut down by
a young actor called Alec Guinness.

And so there was the seed
really for the 1946 film.

It would take a little while
to come to fruition,

but Lean was persuaded that
a Dickens adaptation for the screen

could be his next project.

What I find always surprising

is that he wasn't really
a Dickens fan beforehand,

and I believe he went to a stage
production

that sort of completely changed his
- mind.
- Yes.

When you say he wasn't really
a Dickens fan,

he didn't like reading, he didn't
want to encounter anything

that was on the written page. So
he was invited to attend this play,

this version of Great Expectations,
he went very reluctantly,

but he was absolutely swept up
in this...

It was not quite a one-person play,

but it was put together
by Alec Guinness,

who played Herbert Pocket
in the play and also in the film.

And it had Martita Hunt in it, who
would go on to play Miss Havisham.

Yes. And he was just...
caught up by this.

He thought it was just amazing.
And he waited around afterwards

and decided,
"Right, I'm going to make this."

He hadn't really reached the stage
yet where he could quite say,

"This is what I'm going to do next.
Give me the money."

And so it took a while for him...
- This is 1939, isn't it?
- Yes.

Seven years before he made the film.
He just knew that this

was what he wanted to do. This was a
project he believed passionately in.

Of course, there have been numerous
Dickens adaptations.

Lean thought George Cukor's
David Copperfield decent enough.

But Ealing's Nicholas Nickleby
suffered too common a problem

when it came to Dickens,
trying to cram it all in.

Lean simply listed all the episodes
he hungered to shoot

and found a way to connect them,

passing over great swathes
of the novel. Less is more.

"You have to savour Dickens,"
he said,

filling his chosen scenes with the
majestic possibilities of cinema.

So Dickens adaptations have existed

since the beginning of cinema, really.

And one of the pioneers
of moviemaking itself,

DW Griffiths in Hollywood, had done
a Dickens adaptation in the 1910s

and claimed that Dickens' style
of storytelling,

which jumped between various threads
and through time,

inspired the invention
of cross-cutting.

His works gave filmmakers

a kind of blueprint for a film,
because of the characters,

the nature of 'em, and because
he was a natural storyteller.

You didn't have to invent a story
to actually, you know,

get that onto the screen.

So it was very important for Lean
when adapting this novel

to a screenplay with his
co-screenwriter Ronald Neame,

that they focus on some of the key
moments that would be visual.

And Lean knew from the start
that, for instance,

Pip meeting with Magwitch
or Miss Havisham's fate

were these very big dramatic scenes

that he could get a lot of visual
excitement out of,

that he could place the camera
in interesting places.

By the time Lean had got around to
thinking about Great Expectations,

of course, there had been a war.

He'd seen the play in 1939, thought
about it as a possible film,

and then by the time 1945 arrived,

he and his fellow filmmakers,
Ronald Neame,

Anthony Havelock-Allan, who had
formed this company, Cineguild,

wanted to do something different.

They wanted to take...
to do a new film

that was not connected or in any way
associated with the war years.

And they thought, "Perhaps we should
go back to the Victorian era.

Perhaps we should do something
a little bit historic,

but within kind of memory."

And... Lean obviously thought
straightaway of Great Expectations.

Studio head J Arthur Rank
needed little convincing.

When producer Ronald Neame pitched it
to him, he replied,

"Go away and make it."

Rank rightly saw a chance to crack
the American market.

Lean gained a creative freedom
he had never experienced.

Here was the chance
to define his career

away from his early partnership
with Noel Coward.

Let's talk a little bit
about David Lean first of all.

It's 1946. How big a director
was he at that stage?

Well, at that point,
David Lean is a big director,

but not as big as he's going to be.

He stands on the threshold
of greatness.

He's... he's had...

Some of the films are legendary.

He's made Brief Encounter,
Blithe Spirit,

he's made In Which We Serve. He's
building up this great reputation.

He's beginning to become noticed
in America and his skill is evident.

It's this film that shoots him
into a stellar level of direction.

This is the film
that makes him into,

or allows him to reveal
his David Leanness, if you like.

This is the film that paves
the way for Lawrence Of Arabia,

when he's given the chance to work
with big locations, outdoor scenes,

and use landscape to tell people's
stories as well as just interiors.

So this is a critical moment
in his career, but he's already...

you know, people will still
go to his films in droves.

So Lean also saw an opportunity
with Great Expectations

to move away
from the influence of playwright

and very powerful figure
Noel Coward,

who had been famous before Lean
was ever famous or known,

and who was heavily involved

in the entirety of Lean's career
up to that point,

even with Brief Encounter which
was based on one of Coward's plays.

So he wanted to move away from that
collaboration and be given

a little bit more freedom to explore
the themes and visual style

that he wanted to pursue.
Lean had such a strong sense

of the visual and the aesthetic,
and he believed

that no matter
what the source material was,

or what kind of literary adaptation
he was taking on,

that it shouldn't be
stodgy or stage bound,

that in fact
it should have its own vernacular.

And he kind of had his own
experience as well in this,

because he'd been a film editor
for so long in his youth,

he'd edited up to 25 films,

including some classics like the
49th Parallel by Michael Powell.

So he had a very firm sense of
visual storytelling

and how to sculpt a narrative and
shift between scenes effectively.

For my mind,
Lean did something extraordinary

in that he solved the problem
- of Dickens' maximal fiction.
- Yes.

He figured out how to do it,
- didn't he?
- Yes.

Firstly, he commissioned a script
from a Dickens expert

who tried to essentially condense

the whole of Great Expectations
into a screenplay,

which Lean said
he found embarrassing to read.

You couldn't do it,
it was not possible.

So he, as he had previously done
on a couple of films,

went off to an inn in Cornwall with
his scriptwriter, Ronald Neame,

and they... bashed it around.

And what they did
is they went through the story,

they read the book, read the script,
thought about it,

and then he almost closed his eyes
and thought,

"What is it that I remember

that I think makes great scenes
from this book?"

And he wrote the key scenes down,
just scribbled down,

"These are the scenes...

I can see
how we would shoot these scenes."

What I love is that he almost
confesses his trick at the beginning.

The very opening shot,
the voiceover from John Mills,

"My name is Pip."
And you see the lines on the page.

Then the wind picks up the book
and breezes along all the pages.

And that's what Lean is telling us.
"You're not going to get it all."

I hadn't thought of that.
That's... Yeah, that's very good.

Yes. That's really good.
I love that.

He's... Yeah, he's exposing his art
straightaway.

Pip's central journey encompasses
both a pivotal Kent Estuary childhood

and a London coming of age.

As the young yokel Pip, Anthony
Wager has a wide-eyed innocence.

This slight figure silhouetted
against the vast sky,

that Lean speciality.

John Mills' mature Pip
still has growing to do,

from spendthrift dandy
to the realisation that his story

has been shaped by the past
in both good and bad ways.

After you, miss.

Don't be silly. I'm not going in.

Come in.

Who is it?

- Pip, ma'am.
- Pip?

Mr Pumblechook's boy. Come to play.

Come nearer.

Let me look at you.

The first vision of Estella
had to be unforgettable.

This beautiful young girl brought up
to be loved, but not to love.

The extraordinary
17-year-old Jean Simmons

seemed so much older
than Wager's bewildered Pip,

who she scorns as, "Boy!"

As her older counterpart, Valerie
Hobson recalled an unhappy shoot,

but Lean wanted her unhappiness

and just a flicker of resentment
at her fate.

There was just a hint,
a crack in the veneer,

revealing the heart beneath.

So Jean Simmons came from J Arthur
Rank's sort of school of starlets

and was very well trained
and groomed to be a star,

but she also had a whole other
career during the war

where she'd been a singer
and she'd recited poetry.

So she had quite an interesting
background for such a young woman.

And what she brings to the role
of sort of ice queen Estella

is this sense of almost wisdom
beyond her years,

or an awareness beyond her years,

because she has to live with
Miss Havisham,

this adoptive mother figure who's
so morbid and... and oppressive.

And so Simmons brings something
kind of haunted to the role

in spite of her aloofness.

The entire film really
is driven by Estella.

She's just
an extraordinary character.

But more than that,
in the way that Lean casts it,

both with Jean Simmons
as the incredible younger version,

and then Valerie Hobson,
he really brings...

and they really bring
the whole concept of Estella to life.

I mean,
I do slightly pity Valerie Hobson

in that she has to pick up from
where Jean Simmons left off,

because Jean Simmons is astonishing
as the young Estella

She is...
This is an incredible actress

at the beginning of her career,

and this is the role
that makes her career.

You know, she's played this...
The Rank school of charm,

she's about to enter that world,
but this is an absolute scorcher!

And she, in a way,
interprets and delivers Estella

in a critical way
slightly more convincingly.

I mean, poor old Valerie Hobson

is not given as much material
for Estella as Jean Simmons is,

so she's set up perfectly
by this young actress

who was 17 years old at the time
and is able to pull together

all of these...
this taunting arrogance,

then suddenly changing her mind and
allowing Pip to kiss her.

This child who's on the verge
of becoming

the cold, dead woman
she's supposed to be.

The young versions
of Pip and Estella,

Pip played by Anthony Wager
and Estella played by Jean Simmons,

are absolutely perfect.

They seem to occupy
their own... reality.

Wager has all the right qualities
of being a sort of a young boy,

a young rural boy. You know, he's...
got sort of common elements to him,

but he's got a big heart.

He's got a sort of suitability
to be terrified.

And yet there's a spirit within him

that makes him do
what he's supposed to do.

I love his performance. Of course,
once you see Jean Simmons,

she comes on
as the frankly young diva, Estella,

who is a real snob. Not only do
you see that she is... beautiful,

she is insulting,

she is... really a sort of adjunct
to Miss Havisham,

who is using her as a cat's paw.

For Dickens flamboyant characters,

Lean knew you must cast
outsized characters to play them.

Bernard Miles as kindly, uneducated
blacksmith Joe, for instance,

or a boyish Alec Guinness as the
dotty but faithful Herbert Pocket.

Demobbed that very morning,

he was still in uniform
when he did the screen test.

Voluminous in every way,

Francis L Sullivan
is perfect as Mr Jaggers,

the lawyer
who speaks only in baffling legalese.

And what's so crucial,
once you understand that,

is that casting is vital
when it comes to Dickens.

I think Lean really grasps this,
that if you cast correctly,

almost half your work is done,
because they embody

the greatness of these characters.

But in the case of the two leads,
there's the added issue

of you have a young version
and an older version.

So with Pip,
we have Anthony Wager as the boy,

and we have John Mills, of course,
as the young man.

Well, the...
I mean... it's beautiful casting

and in one way...
quite unusual casting.

I mean, Anthony Wager is a
working-class boy, son of a plumber,

and therefore inhabits the idea of
this kid from a smithy perfectly.

Then as an adult, John Mills

brings a quality to Pip
which is interesting,

in that some people say
he's too old for the role,

but I think what John Mills
brings is... if you like,

the pain of being Pip, he brings
a certain haunted look to Pip,

which I think
is entirely appropriate

for the experiences of Pip's life.
Pip has had his parents die,

he's had his sister die, he's had
to live with his sister's husband,

who's a blacksmith, and he's had to
work in a forge for years.

He's had his heart broken and he
comes to London suddenly with money.

And this is a person who's been
buffeted by fate,

back and forth, back and forth.

And there's something about John
Mills which conveys that,

he looks sometimes half lost...
at the experience of life.

And he is technically measurably
a little older than the character,

but I don't think that matters
because that's the lived experience

- of Pip in his face.
- And there's
always that sense, isn't there,

that he's another one of those
characters

that embodies Dickens' own
experiences, that he was a child

who was thrown out
onto his own devices

and had to figure life out
and was buffeted by fortune.

I think Pip is another version
- of the author.
- Yes.

And sort of arrives at money
as Dickens did,

and then loses all the money
as Dickens did. He really is

very much the Dickens, you know,
he's very much the character

who represents a real version
of Dickens in the book.

Full justice is done to two of
Dickens' most formidable eccentrics.

Finley Currie's Magwitch, the escaped
convict hiding in the graveyard,

manages to be both deeply sinister
and yet sympathetic.

Lean recalled leaving Martita Hunt
to her own devices

as cunning,
heartbroken Miss Havisham,

a mystery
to both director and the audience.

Both are Dickensian ghosts
in a sense,

haunting the expectations
of Pip and Estella.

The wonderful opening scene
of Great Expectations,

arguably one of the best openings
of any film,

sees a young Pip visiting
his parents' grave on Christmas Eve.

It's a windy... wintry day.

It is a masterclass in editing,
in tension, in shock.

And that unusual cut
must have given audiences

such a huge start back in 1946
and is still startling now.

Martita Hunt, of course,
when you think of Miss Havisham,

even amongst
all the subsequent versions,

the first person that comes to mind
is Miss Havisham

in her rotting bridal gown

and that wonderfully
sort of slightly drawn out voice,

which is a... sort of like...

kind of slightly madder,
more eccentric Edith Evans.

You know, "Come here, boy."

She sends shivers down your spine,
quite rightly,

which is what she's supposed to do.

So she's
one of the great eccentrics as well.

I think Lean said he knew very little
about what she was going to do,

- - he just left her to it.
- Yeah.
- In a
sense, he discovered Miss Havisham

- with everybody else.
- Well, because
she played Miss Havisham on stage

night after night after night,

she knew that character
better than the director did.

Again, she was someone who thought
David Lean didn't direct her enough,

but I think that one of the skills
David Lean had was saying,

"Well, she's got it. That's great.

We don't need her to do anything
other than what she's doing.

I have no notes, so keep going."

Lean had the film in his head
from the moment he read the book.

Escaping the poised, contemporary
lives of his previous films,

he saw something both highly stylised
and savagely real.

Expansive estuary skylines
filmed in Rochester

are mixed with German expressionist
sets built at Denham Studios.

Wide angles give way to a deep focus

inspired by Casablanca
and Citizen Kane.

So one of the most memorable scenes
and visuals in Great Expectations

is that of the sort of frozen,
deserted wedding banquet

where Miss Havisham
has been left by her bridegroom,

the thing which will have the knock
on effect on the rest of her life,

the reason that she is the way
she is and the reason

that she is vengeful and vindictive
towards all men as a result.

It's interesting that Dickens
whilst writing the novel

was going through sort of separating
from a 23-year marriage,

and Lean had had his own marital
strife as well,

so there's something interesting in
the depiction of this character

and, I guess, really,
ultimately the comeuppance

that she gets in the film.

Now we should mention Alec Guinness,

because he was in the play
that had stirred David Lean.

And he becomes
a wonderful Herbert Pocket,

the kind of dotty best friend
but very loyal friend.

I mean, he'd just been demobbed,
hadn't he, on the day he was cast?

Yeah, he'd just been demobbed.
And he also really had no intention

of becoming a cinema actor.
He'd worked in one film

and found it
a very unpleasant experience.

It had been a small part,
but he really didn't like it.

He really just wanted
to work in theatre.

So he took the role
and at the beginning

he really struggled
with what cinema...

with what film acting involved.
Again, that was another trick

that David Lean played
that produced a performance.

So there had to be a close up on
Alec Guinness when he was laughing.

And that's a critical part
of Herbert Pocket,

is that he's so cheerful and happy.
- He's comic relief.
- Yeah, he is.

He's enjoys, he laughs, "This
is absolutely wonderful to me.

Oh, Pip, this is a wonderful thing.
What an adventure we're going on."

He's really
genuinely pleased at life.

And Alec Guinness
found it very hard

to laugh
when the camera was pointing at him,

as you can imagine. You know,
"Go on, laugh now."

So what David Lean did was he
said, "Switch the camera off.

" And
he sat and chatted to Alec Guinness.

And Alec Guinness
laughed in close up.

And then Lean said,
"Right, got it." And walked off.

And Alec Guinness realised
he'd been tricked,

and this was a scene
where Herbert Pocket laughs.

And it worked incredibly well.

So he pulled the performance
out of Guinness.

He taught him how to become a film
actor whilst making the film.

And as we can see from the career
that Alec Guinness then developed,

it was a phenomenal education.

He always had a special relationship
- with Lean, didn't he?
- Yes.

The film is intensely cinematic,
a masterpiece of craft.

John Bryan's low-ceiling sets
utilised forced perspective

to the point where they
could only be shot from one angle,

but what an angle and what detail,

from the framed noose
on Jaggers' office wall

to the twitch of candlelight

as Estella leads Pip
to meet Miss Havisham.

They used smoke canisters
from World War II

to create the fog on the marshes.

This is a vision as opulent

as Cruikshank's illustrations
in the books.

So Lean shot on location
in Rochester in Kent,

which was actually some of Dickens'
real stomping grounds

back in the 19th century.
And he... was really clever

in his combination of using pretty
extravagant sets for some elements,

some of the historical things,

and then also bringing in real
locations like the Kentish Marshes,

which are so eerie and bring
so much atmosphere

to the beginning of the film
for instance.

Design, camerawork and editing
amplify theme and character.

Who can forget the jump cut
from Pip colliding with Magwitch

to the close-up
of the terrified boy,

the scream beginning four frames
before his face appears.

Or the setting of Miss Havisham's
desiccated tomb of a wedding day,

frozen in time
to the very minute of the betrayal,

in which she sits,
enacting her vengeance on all men.

When you first caused me to be
brought here, Miss Havisham,

I suppose I really did come here as
any other chance boy might have come,

as a kind of servant to gratify a
want or a whim and to be paid for it.

Aye, Pip, you did.
And that Mr Jaggers was...

Mr Jaggers
had nothing to do with it.

His being my lawyer and the lawyer
of your patron was a coincidence.

He holds the same relation
towards numbers of people.

But when I fell into the mistake
that I have so long remained in

at least you led me on.
Yes...

I let you go on.

- Was that kind?
- Who am I, for heaven's
sake, that I should be kind!

It's a tale of so many themes, class,
ambition, money,

friendship and love
with all its attendant cruelties.

It is an indictment of parenthood and
how we are shaped by our upbringing.

Both Pip and Estella
affectively have their lives authored

by the manipulations
of the vampiric Miss Havisham

and ghastly, misunderstood Magwitch.

Can they ever escape
the chains of their own stories?

And, of course, when Pip is grown up

and Magwitch returns
out of the nowhere really,

he's a very different character to
- the one we saw before.
- Yes. I mean,

one thing critically
is that he's diminished,

both figuratively and literally,
by David Lean by the way he's shot.

So where before he was shot with
a wide lens, quite low down,

he's now shot with a very sort of...

He's made to appear smaller by the
use of lenses, by the use of angles,

and Pip is made to appear
to match his height.

So suddenly this terrifying figure
becomes this much smaller man,

and so he's much less terrifying,
he becomes much more pathetic.

But by that, I don't mean
pathetic in a scornful way,

I mean, he has pathos
and he's a sadder character.

He's... desperate to see the boy
whose life he's changed

and to see if he's done
- something good.
- He's a father

seeking his son, isn't he?
- Absolutely.
- Yeah.

But by doing so,
by... taking that one glimpse,

he destroys both of them.
I mean, he destroys himself,

and he also then
removes the money that Pip has

and completely destroys
his expectations.

So this,
"I must see what good I've done,"

then ends up wrecking everything.

Who do you want?

Mr Pip.

So the famous Dickens' illustrator
Cruikshank

was known for using these quite
moody, really, images in India ink

of the various characters and
stories he illustrated for Dickens.

In fact, he didn't illustrate
Great Expectations originally,

but he was kind of the illustrator
associated to that writer.

And so Lean and his sort of crew
were interested in aping that look.

And that kind of lends itself
to the noir thing as well,

because these are
quite shadowy images,

and you get that a lot from
the characters of Magwitch,

Miss Havisham, these seedy
or shady at least sinister figures

that are in Pip's life.

So David Lean was very influenced by

a very moody period of silent
German films from the 1920s,

called German Expressionism, films
like The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari.

And these films were known
for very low-angle lighting,

which cast dramatic, theatrical,

sometimes jagged shadows
across the sets.

Elements of the Gothic,
a sort of darkness psychologically.

And all of that was a huge influence
in the post-war cinematic landscape,

particularly with the rise
of film noir.

And so Lean is also responding
to these things

and to his period of time. And
right at the height of film noir,

he too is looking
at the German expressionists.

And how remarkable that rather than
it being in some little crime film,

as with most of those sort of things
that were aping that style,

this was a Victorian period drama
of Dickens'. And he takes that style

and transposes it
onto this unlikely material.

Released in 1946
amid post-war austerity,

audiences lapped up the chance

to escape into such
all-encompassing storytelling.

It earned millions in America,

where it won Oscars
for its sets and art direction.

David Lean
was nominated for Best Director,

but the performances
were cruelly snubbed.

It is now held up as an emblem
of all that film can achieve.

Great Expectations was an enormous
success when it came out.

It was a success
with audiences and the critics,

many of whom claimed it to be one of
the best British films ever made.

It did very, very well.

It actually, you know...

It brought honour and glory
to everyone concerned,

Lean especially, of course,
who was then, you know,

suddenly regarded not just
as a great British filmmaker,

but as a man of international
standing as a director.

Lean's reputation
was built on his epics,

but this is the purest expression
of his talent.

It still has that epic feel,

but combined
with Dickens' intensity and vigour

the director is marvellously
contained by the author.

If a fan told him that they thought

Lawrence Of Arabia
was his finest film,

he would simply say, "Thank you."

If they said Great Expectations,
he would say, "Quite right."

So Dickens wrote
two different versions

of the end of Great Expectations

and, apparently,
was himself unsure about it.

He originally wrote a version
where many years later,

Pip and Estella
have a chance encounter,

but it was a little bit too
ambiguous for the publishers

and they insisted he write something
a little bit more resolute.

And so he has them
actually meet again

at the old house of Miss Havisham.

And there's
still a coldness between them.

These two are probably not headed
in the same direction in life.

It's definitely still quite
a downbeat ending, I would say,

but there is some finality to it.

David Lean's ending
is... different again.

It sees Pip and Estella reunite and
meet up at Miss Havisham's house.

But it's a far more sort of,
you know...

it seems to be leaning into
a certain kind of friendship

that rises up between them,
a certain kind of

putting the past behind them
finally.

One of the most extraordinary things
about Great Expectations

is it has almost set how we imagine
the world of Dickens to be.

If we read the books, we think
of an imagery that Lean gave us.

Yes, he frames Victorian London,
he frames the sort of...

the gothic element of Dickens
in a way that defines him really.

You know, in a sense, Dickensian now
partly means Leansian, I suppose.

They become linked in the way
they depict each other.

David Lean
is really the first director

to actually make Dickens
live on the screen.

Live to the point
not just when you're watching it,

but that actually live in the memory
years and years and years

after you've seen these films,
because he understood

the impact that you could have

if you created
the right kind of vision of it.

It's stylised,
but not to the point of inhumanity.

He's kept the flesh and blood
of the characters.

He's been faithful to Dickens
in terms of the narrative

and also the moral complexity of it.

And yet he's sort of managed
to edit 'em down

into sort of two-hour movies,
you know, these huge books.

And so that's what I think
gives them their impact.

It's impossible to think of Dickens

and specifically of Great
Expectations as a story

without thinking of...
Miss Havisham's wedding banquet,

or without thinking of the character
of Magwitch

looking like Finlay Currie. To me
the two are completely inextricable.

And I often wonder why any filmmaker
would try to remake this adaptation

or try to do it, because
Lean did it the best, I think.

Is this the best ever Dickens'
- adaptation?
- I would...

I can't think of a better. I
genuinely can't think of a better,

because of the harmony between
the writer and the director.

You know, we will never know
what Dickens thinks of this film,

but it feels to me like it's...
got the spirit there

in a way which is very, very hard
to capture,

because Dickens
is a joyous comedic writer.

He's funny and alive and vibrant.

And people get defeated by Dickens
and they churn out stuff.

It's Lean who understands him
and who brings him to the screen.

It's a moving work of art...
that makes him live.

Almost, like, living together.
They really are. They are...

This is... Lean and Dickens
as Lennon and McCartney.

This is absolute harmony.

For all the wonderful television and
film adaptations of Dickens' novels

that have followed, including Lean's
version of Oliver Twist,

none can match the startling effect
of Great Expectations.

The dreamlike power of the film

has shaped the way
we imagine the author's world.

In every sense, this is the
definitive adaptation of Dickens.

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