David Parkinson finds this ambitious adaptation an absorbing watch.
Having launched his screen career with memorable performances as Herbert Pocket and Fagin in David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), it was somewhat apt that Alec Guinness should give his last display of cinematic excellence in another Dickens adaptation.
Capturing the shabby grandiosity and brazen duplicity of William Dorrit, the Oscar-nominated Guinness provides a touchstone of flawed humanity that stands between the dutiful virtue of Sarah Pickering’s Amy and the meek benevolence of Derek Jacobi’s Arthur Clennam and the less shaded perfidy of Bill Fraser’s Casby, Max Wall’s Flintwinch and Joan Greenwood’s pitiless matriarch.
For all the brilliance of the ensemble playing, the strength of this fourth film version of Charles Dickens’s eleventh novel lies in Christine Edzard’s Oscar-nominated screenplay and the pacing and control of her direction. Originally published in 19 instalments between December 1855 and June 1857, the sprawling story exposed the inadequacies of the penal system, the iniquities of class division, the inefficiencies of government bureaucracy and the impossibility of family unity. Yet while George Bernard Shaw could call the book Dickens’ “masterpiece among many masterpieces”, it could also be used to validate George Orwell’s contention that his writing combined “rotten architecture and wonderful gargoyles”.
By dividing the narrative into two parts, Nobody’s Fault and Little Dorrit’s Story, Edzard rectified some of the weaknesses in the original structure. Her re-ordering allows us to get to know the characters before they become embroiled in the drama and allows us to sample the contrasting atmospheres of the Marshalsea debtors’ prison, the grindingly poor hovels of Bleeding Heart Yard, the oppressively gloomy Clennam resisdence and the soul-destroying corridors of the Circumlocution Office. So, whether watched in consecutive three-hour segments, in two parts or broken down into nightly episodes across a week, this stands as the most ambitious and considered take on any Dickens novel. Andrew Davies’s forthcoming 16-week reworking for the BBC, therefore, has some act to follow.
This masterful adaptation of the Dickens' novel is told in two parts, and has a peculiar relevance for today.
Part I (Nobody's Fault) tells the tale of fortunes lost and found, of secrets buried and unearthed, from the viewpoint of Arthur Clennam (Derek Jacobi), who in his attempts to help the Dorrits, abandons wealth and is brought to The Marshalsea, the debtors' prison.
Part 2 (Little Dorrit's Story) relates the same story through the eyes of Little Dorrit herself, the dutiful daughter of the 'Father of The Marshalsea' (Alec Guinness), who forms a deep love for the oblivious Clennam. In the first part the momentum of the narrative is broken by accidents and coincidences, but in the second the events ingeniously begin to overlap. Besides the excitement of the story, the chief delight of this epic production lies in the superb performances, which manage to convey Dickens' penchant for the grotesque while suggesting their inner lives. Impressive camerawork and Verdi's music mean the six hours roll by far too quickly!
The Leopard 
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Little Dorrit
