Review of Oliver! (1968) by Tiberio S — 09 Jun 2011

When I see a musical or movie-musical, I'm often left cold. Even the much-ballyhooed works of Rodgers & Hammerstein generally have me wishing the story had been nipped and tucked. I find films like The Sound Of Music and South Pacific really only get interesting at the end. I wonder, is it just me?

And then I see something like Oliver!, something that succeeds in every criteria you could care to throw at it, and I realise: nope. Some musicals just aren't as good.

As a story, this is just rollicking. Thanks to Charles Dickens's brand of shaggy-dog-storytelling, we're always just about to get settled when the next great leap comes in the plot. It's designed to show off different parts of Victorian society - so, all the really grimy bits - and it is gripping, one of those tales that would probably work just as well without music.

That is not a dig at the music, of course, which is marvellous. Not just the actual tunes, which have long-since burned themselves into pop culture consciousness, but the way they're performed. "Consider Yourself" and "Who Will Buy" are completely jaw-dropping in the way they just keep escalating, until seemingly all of London is dancing, peforming stunts, all in time. I look back on stagey efforts like Carousel and just think: what was *that*?

But where Oliver! really trumps the competition is in its characters. In part, this is thanks to Dickens, but the casting is an unmistakeable boon. Ron Moody makes Fagin at once repellent and seductively likeable. Shani Wallis makes Nancy at once utterly good and wilfully one of the crooks. Her goodness is, in the end, not enough to rescue her, and actively precipitates her downfall. How adult is that?

Oliver Reed makes a total monster of Bill Sykes just with his eyes, and Jack Wild is the ultimate Artful Dodger, cheeky, intelligent, but completely aware of his own standing in life, as shown by his walk into the sunset with Fagin. Like Nancy he's stuck with a user, and knows it, but accepts he's got no one else. These are rich, flawed, complicated characters.

All except Oliver, who like his arguable female clone Annie serves no greater purpose in the plot than an object that must be returned to its rightful owner. He has a likeable spark of impetuousness, but there's really nothing else to him.

Or at least, that's how it looks at first. Really concentrate, and there's a lot more going on.

Oliver is very deliberately a blank slate. He is innocent, unjudgemental, and has the potential to be anything if guided properly. The other (usually unsavoury) characters all see Oliver and are forced to re-evaluate their own mistakes and choices in life, and treat him accordingly. Fagin opens up to him almost immediately, after being haunted for who knows how long by his conscience (literally, in the form of an all-seeing owl). Before long he is "Reviewing The Situation". Nancy, who thinks herself good and true, sees Oliver and confronts her abusive, dead-end relationship with Sykes, and she re-affirms it, "As Long As He Needs Me". Sadly the film omits the crucial reprise, which she sings about Oliver instead, but her shift in priorities is clear anyway, as she realises she must rescue Oliver from her own fate.

The monstrous Sykes can't stand the thought of someone growing up with a better life than he had, or seeing Nancy recognise her lot in life, so he takes every opportunity to trap and ruin Oliver, ultimately even forgetting why he keeps Nancy around - she's his last link to humanity, and without her he's literally, quickly doomed. Even the Artful Dodger shows flickers of promise that he'll change his ways: seeing Sykes receive his inevitable punishment, he looks remorseful for a moment. Then he picks someone's pocket. Like Nancy, he's made his choices, but unlike Nancy, Oliver hasn't helped the Dodger change his. There's so, so much going on here.

You don't have to delve into the nitty-gritty of the characters to enjoy Oliver!, although I like to. The songs are fantastic, the director makes full use of the extra room a film allows over a stage, and the cast keep it captivating. They simply don't get much better than this.