Oliver! (1968) [Special DVD & CD Gift Set!] – DVD

***/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Ron Moody, Oliver Reed, Harry Secombe, Mark Lester
screenplay by Vernon Harris, based on the novel by Charles Dickens and the play by Lionel Bart
directed by Carol Reed

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There’s an exception to every rule, and Oliver! bucks one of the most depressing: that every bloated, twilight-of-old-Hollywood musical is crass and overblown. To be sure, Carol Reed was far from his The Third Man/Outcast of the Islands heyday when he directed this Oscar-winning roadshow, and one can sense a sigh of resignation as he puts on the mega-musical feedbag. But unlike the once-great craftsmen who started turning in horrors like Hello, Dolly!, the movie has style and credibility–Reed is genuinely interested in the narrative and the mood, as opposed to what other declining directors would highlight: the production design and the money. Oliver! is still sealed in an expensive cocoon, but what’s inside is a world worth watching and enjoying.

Virtually every other filmmaker of the era would have started in a workhouse and lingered there to bend perceptions and expose budgets–but there’s the humble room, with the boys mechanically trudging to gruel and singing “Food, Glorious Food.” It’s a nice beginning, and while it streamlines things a little too much by launching Oliver (Mark Lester) into “please sir…” without a proper introduction, it’s a big enough number to belong in a musical while also small enough to be dramatically credible. And Reed doesn’t rub your face in the expensiveness of things: although Oliver’s progress from undertaker to traveller to his rendezvous with the Artful Dodger (Jack Wild) is made on pricey studio sets, Reed’s more interested in a grungy décor that’s designed to look inhabited than he is in “period.” It’s a small protest in such a massive family production, but it makes all the difference in forcing you to give a damn.

Though the (admittedly clever) Lionel Bart songs take Dickens down from the sheer hell he depicted on the page, Reed has compensated inasmuch as he can by ensuring the cast doesn’t invoke the smiley-faced morons of musicals past. Onna White’s choreography occasionally gives us too much everyone-working-in-harmony guff, but there’s no grotesque pseudo-happiness or oppressive denial of suffering. This is signalled by the hiring of Oliver Reed–a man who seemingly could never appear in a musical not directed by Ken Russell–to play Bill Sikes, and while Ron Moody’s Fagin is drawn a little too toothlessly, together they ensure there’s at least as much pleasure as there is pain. If it ain’t Alan Clarke, neither is it an insult to that which you and Dickens know about what really happens to and by such people.

This is not to say that there isn’t the slight whiff of cornball Hollywood/Broadway/West End in the conception and execution. This is a musical, not a political tract, and things pull up from real negotiation of the novel’s themes. Bloat, too, occasionally sneaks in: Reed comes close to genius sequence in the “Who Will Buy?” number, only to scuttle Oliver’s genuine thankfulness with too much, too often. But for all its standard flaws, Oliver! doesn’t live or die by them; it’s more interested in reading into the form than in repeating the same old saws over and over again. And it’s this interest in creativity, rather than killing you with budget and production values, that raises the picture above the decadent pack, making it one of the few Sixties musicals to breathe on its own instead of trying to suffocate you to death.

THE DVD
In conjunction with the theatrical release of Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist, Sony repackages their widescreen edition of Oliver! from the late-Nineties with the film’s soundtrack CD, which is available exclusively as part of this so-called gift set. The 2.35:1, 16×9-enhanced image does an impressive job of dealing with the film’s dark, muddy colours; fine detail is mostly unimpeded by grain or edge-enhancement. Approximating the quadraphonic mix that accompanied theatrical prints, the Dolby 5.1 audio is full and robust–and if the sound effects don’t reverberate much through the surround channels, the separation of the orchestrations is creative and well-distributed between the front discretes. Extras include a vintage making-of featurette (7 mins.) that’s interesting mainly as a curio: it says how much work went into the production without determining what kind of work it was, though its appeals to the film’s “eternal verities” is an indication of what promotional blather could say then as opposed to now. A photo gallery and the trailer round out the package. Both the DVD and CD come in keepcases–an odd choice.

153 minutes; G; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, French DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English, French subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Sony