Oliver! 1968. Great Britain. Directed by Carol Reed. Screenplay by Vernon Harris. With Mark Lester, Ron Moody, Oliver Reed, Shani Wallis, Jack Wild. 4K restoration by Sony Pictures Entertainment; courtesy Swank. North American premiere. 159 min.
Though best remembered for The Third Man, Carol Reed also excelled at portraits of lost childhoods, as he showed in The Fallen Idol (another collaboration with Graham Greene), A Kid for Two Farthings, and this beloved adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist by way of Lionel Bart’s 1960 stage musical Oliver! The film, distinguished by John Box’s thrilling evocation of Victorian London, was a huge popular success and received countless awards, including Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and a rare honorary award for Onna White’s choreography. Roger Ebert called it “a treasure of a movie,” Pauline Kael in the New Yorker exclaimed that “the musical numbers emerge from the story with a grace that has been rarely seen since the musicals of René Clair,” and even today, many a middle-school student can be heard singing “Food, Glorious Food” and “Consider Yourself” in a tentative, cracking voice. Without a trace of condescension, Reed got thoughtful performances from unknown child actors who held their own opposite veterans Oliver Reed, Ron Moody, Hugh Griffith, and Harry Secombe. This new 4K restoration draws upon cutting-edge digital technologies to resolve some of the imperfections inherent in the celluloid restoration of 1998, including printed-in spots, and achieves greater fidelity in color grading and multichannel sound.