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Oliver Twist (1922) DVDRip (SiRiUs sHaRe)

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Oliver Twist (1922)

Oliver's mother, a penniless outcast, died giving birth to him. As a young boy Oliver is brought up in a workhouse, later apprenticed to an uncaring undertaker, and eventually is taken in by a gang of thieves who befriend him for their own purposes. All the while, there are secrets from Oliver's family history waiting to come to light.

James A. Marcus ... Mr. Bumble
Aggie Herring ... Mrs. Corney
Jackie Coogan ... Oliver Twist
Nelson McDowell ... Sowerberry
Lewis Sargent ... Noah Claypole
Joan Standing ... Charlotte
Carl Stockdale ... Monks
Edouard Trebaol ... The Artful Dodger
Lon Chaney ... Fagin
Taylor Graves ... Charlie Bates
George Siegmann ... Bill Sikes
Gladys Brockwell ... Nancy Sikes
Lionel Belmore ... Mr. Brownlow
Florence Hale ... Mrs. Bedwin
Joseph Hazelton ... Mr. Grimwig

Director: Frank Lloyd

Runtime: 74 mins

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013450/

Codecs:

Video : 555 MB, 1047 Kbps, 23.976 fps, 576*432 (4:3), DIV3 = DivX v3 ;-) MPEG-4 (Low-Motion),
Audio : 30 MB, 56 Kbps, 48000 Hz, 1 channels, 0x55 = MPEG Layer-3, CBR,

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With a good cast headed by Jackie Coogan and Lon Chaney, plus decent atmosphere that conjures up the sights of Dickens' world, this version of "Oliver Twist" works well. The Dickens story makes wonderful movie material, but it is also quite melodramatic, and for a film version to succeed requires convincing characters and a believable recreation of the world of the novel. Coogan, Chaney, and director Frank Lloyd all get the job done.

Coogan was of course the best and obvious choice in his day to play Oliver. But Chaney, although much more limited in his screen time, is even more memorable. Fagin is the kind of role that Chaney most excelled at. His make-up, mannerisms, and gestures are all impressive, and it is amazing the way that without dialogue he can so quickly and efficiently define his character's relationships with the other characters. The rest of the cast are mostly lesser-known names, but they all do a good job of establishing their characters, too. The settings are a bit plain at times, but are always consistent with the story, and they do the job of showing us the varied places where Oliver lived the different stages of his young life.

There have many versions of the Oliver story, and the terrific David Lean version from the 40's is still the one by which all others should be measured. But this is a good adaptation, and it has almost everything you could ask for in a silent version of the story.

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I expected a little more from this film than it delivered. It was not imaginative visually and the excellent cast was often not given the opportunity to explore their characters. This was especially true of Lon Chaney, whose Fagin does very little. Of course he looks great and the shot of him in prison toward the end is unforgettable.

I suspect the film-makers were more concerned with making this a Jackie Coogan picture rather than a Charles Dickens one - and this is where the film loses its narrative drive and character development. Mind you Coogan is excellent, but they really turn Oliver into the Kid, he even wears the same hat. I was impressed by Gladys Brockwell as Nancy, and the death of Bill Sykes is pretty special, but overall the film falls a little flat. Of course the hideous music on the Madacy tape I saw didn't help - nor the horrible flickering of the EP recording.

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Jackie Coogan and certainly Lon Chaney were one of the most popular actors of the silent era and have since been like that. Oliver Twist is one of the greatest films of it's version and a delight to watch. Jackie Coogan had just finished his work with the Chaplin company appearing in "A Day's Pleasure" (1919) and his unforgettable role in "The Kid" (1921) and after Albert Austin's My Boy (1921), Jackie was sent to stardom with Oliver Twist!

And Lon Chaney was the greatest actor ever in my opinion. When I watch his films as diverse as Tell it to the Marines (1926) & The Unknown (1927), it always sends chills down my spine, good chills. He was magnificent in other silent film classics such as While The City Sleeps (1928), West of Zanzibar (1928) & Laugh, Clown Laugh (1928). He is just amazing. Chaney was born in 1883 and his parents who were both deaf-mutes probably helped Chaney to become a good actor in the future. In 1912 he began acting at Universal in bit parts, later in Romantic roles and finally in the late 1910s he began perfecting, the terrifying stranger character used in several of his later feature films. His most famous films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) & The Phantom of the Opera (1925) have sometimes been ignored as great films although Chaney is great in both of them. Several of his films are lost and that's another reason why Chaney is still so popular today. His last silent film Thunder (1929) is also believed lost but a few minutes have been discovered and show that Chaney was really good in it too. He was such a devoted actor that the lead role of Thunder (1929), he plays Grumpy Anderson a railroad engineer and in fact, he went to a real engineer and made him a deal that he'll buy the engineer a new pair of overralls and Chaney would get his old ones so that it looked worn in. In 1926 Chaney made Tell it to the Marines where Chaney proved that he didn't need make-up to be a good actor and his performance was so superb that he was the first ever motion picture actor to be honored with a special award from the Marine Corps. Chaney followed with his amazing film The Unknown (1927) where he played Alonzo the Armless and his performance in that film is his greatest and I think it's one of the top 10 silent films of all time. Going back to the film Thunder (1929) Chaney had gone location shooting and he caught pneumonia and it proved to be very serious later although no one knew of the consequences just yet. In 1930 Irving Thalberg chose Chaney's first sound film for he did not want to talk but he did and it was his last film. The film was The Unholy Three (1930) a re-make of his earlier film of the same name in 1925. Chaney again gave a stunning performance and the scene at the end for many is very sad. Chaney farewells his 2 co-stars and he's on the end of the train as it rides on along and away into the distance slowly as the camera fades to black and that was Chaney's last appearance on the Silver Screen and one month later he died. Chaney will always be remembered as The Man of a Thousand Faces and his films will always be pleasurable to watch.

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* When it was found without intertitles in the 1970s, the film was restored with the help of Jackie Coogan and Sol Lesser. The intertitles were created by Blackhawk Films.

Oliver Twist (1948) DVDRip Dual Esp-Eng (SiRiUs sHaRe) is available at http://www.mininova.org/tor/1069607

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