Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6297 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-10-27
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Formats: PAL, Colour, HiFi Sound
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 380 minutes

Synopsis
A drama based on the novel by Charles Dickens which tells the story of Arthur Clennam who is thrown into a debtor's prison. There he meets a young seamstress whose father has been imprisoned for twenty-five years.

Review
Edzard has divided her thoroughly engrossing, deeply moving, brilliantly edited six-hour film into two parts: Nobody s Fault, where even responsibility for widespread poverty is taken up by no one, and where someone or other declares Nobody s fault! so often it comes as a shock when someone says My fault! over the accident of brushing against someone else in the street. Following Dickens, Edzard also undertakes a satire of bureaucratic runaround, propelled by Arthur Clennam s desire to secure a patent for a safely operating machine for his business, that suggests Kafka as well as Carlyle. The second part, beginning with her birth, follows Amy s pilgrim s progress, humanizing Amy by disclosing her noble interiority, whereas in the first part we view her in patches from the outside. Before Edzard concludes her calmly feminist work we see a number of scenes we have already seen in the first part, but with the events shifted to Amy s perspective, a partial, miniature echo of Robert Browning s method in The Ring and the Book. Don t worry; it all ends happily with a wedding. But Shakespeareans know that such anticipated bliss is problematic. Amy marries a man who, throughout the first part of the film, somehow failed to notice how much in love she was with him. Edzard s first-half reliance on Clennam s perspective has extended this failure to ourselves. Nobody s fault! The actors provide a phenomenal range of quirky, colorful humanity. For me, the three best performances are given by Cyril Cusack as Amy s uncle, who is as devoted to his brother as Amy is to her father, Roshan Seth as Pancks, and Joan Greenwood as elderly Mrs. Clennam, who has a family secret tucked away. Sarah Pickering is strikingly convincing as Little Dorrit. --Dennis Grunes Wordpress.com

Review
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. --David Parkinson

Customer Reviews

Little Dorrit
Christine Ezeard has allowed time, in her wonderful adaptation of Dickens' masterpiece 'Little Dorrit', for us to savour scenes, to understand character, motive and history. In some unique way she has exactly caught what we understand, from his writings, to be Dickens' perception of his world. It is as though a camera has been set up in the mid-Victorian world that is the background to the novel and somehow we are offered an insight into the mind of people of that time. The camera observes and does not attempt to manipulate the viewer. In this way Dickens' intent and the symbolism of this dark novel is plain and unadorned. All characters and scenes are unforgettable: Pancks, Flora, Afferty and Flintwich, Mrs Clennam, the Dorrits and all the other remarkable characters; the men lounging against the Marshalsea wall, the Clennam house slowly disintegrating, Bleeding Heart Yard...this is an adaptation which is quite unique. There is not one piece of acting in this fine film. It is being, the cast having the ability here to flesh out charcters straight from the writer's pages. We have not been offerd a modern interpretation of this story, there are no flashy camera angles, no fast cutting, no snatches designed for our time's alleged inability to cope with anything longer than a few minutes. Having experienced this version of Little Dorrit you will never want to see another. Remarkably we are able to watch the same story twice, from Clennam's perspective and from Little Dorrit and her father's perspective. Buy, watch and savour.

Not everyone's cup of tea but an outstanding adaptation
Christine Edzard's films (note the plural) of "Little Dorrit" make up perhaps the greatest and most comprehensive adaptation of Dickens ever produced for the big screen. I use the plural because the work comes in the form of two 3-hour films called "Nobody's Fault" and "Little Dorrit's Story". To get the best out of them, both must be viewed and in that order.

The film is studded with great names - Derek Jacobi, Alec Guinness, Cyril Cusack, Joan Greenwood (in her last film appearance) and a host of mostly British acting talent including Robert Morley, Michael Elphick, Bill Fraser and Eleanor Bron, all in little more than bit parts. But for me, the star of the show has to be Sarah Pickering, the unknown actress entrusted with the title role. I have tried, without success, to find just one other film in which she appeared.

The film is set mostly in the notorious Marshalsea debtors prison in Borough, south London, where Dickens' own father was once incarcerated. A debtors prison is a perfect example of what Joseph Heller would later dub "catch 22". A person imprisoned for debt was denied the right to work, hence had no means of earning the money to pay off the debt(s) of which he/she was accused.

The film is essentially a story of the love between Arthur Clennam, a man in his 40s (Jacobi) and Amy Dorrit, usually called Little Dorrit, a young woman of 22 though, according to Dickens, she looked half that age (Pickering). It is set in the period preceding the Reform Act of 1855, and indeed, the novel contributed in no small way to the debate leading up to that piece of legislation. It is a very complex plot (this is, after all, based on a Dickens novel) but one of the devices used is a government department called the Circumlocution Office, in which Dickens and the film makers parody bureaucratic processes by taking them to extremes. Dickens did not go as far as Kafka, who saw authority as actively plotting the destruction of its victims, but he savagely attacks the processes and procedures whereby government is carried out and the means whereby people found their way into high office. At that time, progress through a civil service career was mostly through family connections, a process that enabled illiterates to attain high office.

Edzard's 1987/99 adaptation of the novel is lovingly crafted and filmed exclusively on sets created for the purpose, i.e. there was no location shooting. The background music is adapted from the work of Dickens' Italian contemporary Guiseppe Verdi.

This is not for everyone, but for those who like Dickens and like to see attempts to be true to his work it is an absolute must. Only now (2008) has it appeared on DVD, remastered from the negatives by the original production company. Guinness, Greenwood and Cusack are, sadly, no longer with us, but this serves as a wonderful reminder of the quality of their work

Applause, Applause
I have attended two films - and only two - where at the conclusion of the film the audience stood up and applauded. One was 'Lawrence of Arabia', the other was both parts of this interpretation of 'Little Dorrit'.
I appeal to those who can make it happen to release this magnificent film on DVD.
Little Dorrit is, in my opinion, not only The greatest novel that Dickens wrote (having a slight edge over Bleak house, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend) but the greatest novel in the English language. It is assuredly a worthy competitor to the works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Flaubert.
It seems to me that although the film takes 'liberties' with the text and has major omissions the spirit of the book prevails. The idea of 'splitting' the film into two parts - one giving Arthur Clenham's view, the other the view of Little Dorrit - is the work of genius.
See the film, read the book and I defy you not to admit that your perspective on life has not been altered. This is a work of art not to be missed.