Great Expectations

7/7/2022

If I were ever to be given the chance to be a fly-on-the-wall at a conversation, then It'd have to be one with Charles Dickens and David Lean. How the latter managed to visualise and dramatise so expertly the finely honed characters of the former is astonishing. In this, possibly less well known story - "Pip" (Tony Wager) encounters an escaped convict in an eery graveyard when he goes to tend his late mother's grave.. Despite his fear, he helps feed the old man and free him from his chains. As he ages, he is summoned by a local, wealthy, spinster "Miss Havisham" (a wonderfully imperious Martita Hunt) who wants him to befriend the truly unpleasant, spoilt, "Estella" (Jean Simmons). Skip forwards a few years and "Pip" (now, John Mills) is rescued from his rural existence by a lawyer, the eve