Furnished with striking visual detail and told with great narrative economy by director David Lean, Great Expectations is an exemplary adaptation of Charles Dickens' dense and episodic novel. Read critic reviews
Great Expectations
1946, Drama, 1h 58m
29 Reviews 5,000+ RatingsWhat to know
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Movie Info
In this Dickens adaptation, orphan Pip (John Mills) discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers (Francis L. Sullivan) that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt), and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella (Valerie Hobson), he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.
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Genre: Drama
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Original Language: English (United Kingdom)
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Director: David Lean
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Producer: Anthony Havelock-Allan, Ronald Neame
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Writer: David Lean, Ronald Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allan
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Release Date (Theaters): original
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Release Date (Streaming):
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Runtime:
Cast & Crew
Critic Reviews for Great Expectations
Audience Reviews for Great Expectations
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Underneath the action of Dickens tale, with wonderful direction and heartfelt acting (particularly by the ladies!), is a poignant illustration of the longing for class and status as a necessary means of survival, a way to forbear the ills and evils of the world. By the reckoning of the film, poverty is the worst that the world has to offer. A luminous work.
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There have been at least half a dozen adaptations of Charles Dicken's novel "Great Expectations" over the course of film history and David Lean's 1946 adaptation stands above them as the best. Lean's film isn't just the best adaptation of a Dickens novel, but one of the greatest films ever. The cinematography by Guy Green is absolutely gorgeous with scenes of beautiful landscapes as the sun sets and characters silhouetted over the fading sun. The set decorations of Miss Havisham's (Martita Hunt) room she won't leave are creepy and beautiful at the same time. Scenes play out as you remember Dickens writing them. There's a nice pace to this story and never once does Lean's film linger or stutter. Pip is played by John Mills as an adult when he is supposed to be in his early twenties, he was well into his late thirties at the time of filming. Mills looks old, but despite that, he displays the naiveté and gullibleness expected of the character on his journey to becoming a gentleman.
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Not my favourite Lean film. I still think that a great Great Expectations is yet to come. It's a great tale that eludes a good telling from a cinematic point of view. Despite the all star cast here, it doesn't quite meet with the expectations of the written form.
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Not the masterpiece David Lean's Oliver Twist is, but still a flawless adaptation from novel by Charles Dickens with stunning cinematic landscapes and deft direction, and a terrific cast. 97/100
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