All character actors should see this at leat ten times
It's three must-see lessons in character-acting:

Anyone who thinks Alec Guiness can only play nice hasn't seen this. (Also must see KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS where he plays eight characters including an active guy in his early twenties, an old man frozen by Parkinsons' Disease and a woman.)

Robert Newton. Known for saying "Arrrrrrgh, Matey!" To see how incredibly versatile he was, compare this terrifying Sikes to his performance in Hitchcock's JAMAICA INN, where he plays what should be a flashy good-guy as a crashing bore.

Francis Sullivan uses fat comedically as well as anyone like Jackie Gleason or John Goodman. In fact the only better demonstration of the fat-guys' craft I can think of is Sydney Greenstreet. OK, Robert Morley too.

Staggeringly Great Film
There are plenty of reviews here urging you to watch this film. Let me say only this: watch it for two geniuses: one, David Lean who directed this masterpiece in daring and haunting style; and Alec Guinnis (sp.?) who plays Fagin. You will never forget this Fagin, not as long as you live. The film has some of the greatest camera work I've ever seen, such as the pub scene where the camera shows you what is going on with all the different characters without a word being said. There is also the long beginning without dialogue to show you the heights to which cinema can reach as art. ---- Go for it. This is priceless. It will make you want to read the book. It will make you want to know Dickens' world. -- For me, it's not a dated film at all, but an overwhelmingly intense experience on every level.

Simply Perfect.
There's nothing I can say that has not been said already but for the sake of giving this movie one more positive review and someone who's never seen it one more reason to see it, I shall embark upon this small quest. Legend is the life of Oliver Twist - full of rags and pain and hunger while his soul was ever alight with love of humanity. Dicken's work is so brilliant one would never believe that it could possibly be translated to the screen...well, for every other version in existence, that holds. But not for Lean's version. Brilliance matched brilliance and words became powerful images of driving rain and vile murderers...and kindly old gents. It is impossible for me not only to say what others haven't said but also to say how truly moving and awe-inspiring this movie is in the words it deserves. Heaven help you if you don't see it, for you will be missing one of the greatest stories of human existence and beauty.

Visual Poetry at it's best.
As much as I like LAWRENCE OF ARABA, though still way too long, I have had to admit that this is David Lean's masterpiece. I saw it projected on the big screen at the Egyptian Theatre during a Lean Retrospective and it dropped my jaw. All of this talk about how LAWRENCE changed editing in motion pictures with its "match cut" blah, blah, blah, when Lean had been editing, or supervising the editing of his films like that all along. Trust American audiences not to believe anything unless it appears on their territory in the form of Columbia Studios and Sam Spiegel.

Anyway, this is a glorious adaptation of "Oliver Twist." Mercifully, the entire Maylie chapters have been excised and it illustrates just how useless that subplot was in the novel when one doesn't miss it and the story survives complete and whole without it. OT was a serial, in papers and magazines, before it was compiled for a novel, and one feels that Dickens is dragging things out when he brings in the unacceptable coincidence of the Maylie family. Oliver barely has lines in the novel, either, so accusations of turning him into a silent waif are unfounded. Dickens was quite aware that he was using Oliver as a device to show us the hideous underbelly of Victorian London and that's what this film is about - Fagin, Sikes and Nancy, and the natural price one pays by being an outlaw... or murderer.

I do think that Monks' connection to Oliver has suffered in this adaptation, because one is never sure why he believes Oliver's inheritance is rightfully his. Also, the last shot of the house in Pentonville is too clean; I understand that this is supposed to be in direct contrast to the horrible grime we've been living in for nearly two hours, but there are no other people on the street and it all seems too sterile, almost as if shot in Beverly Hills.

Still, a masterpiece, both visually and narratively. GREAT EXPECTATIONS is actually a warmer, more popular, old fashioned film, but this second adaptation of Lean's will leave you looking at the world in a slightly different camera angle.

Dissapointed
Ever since I saw the BBC version of Oliver Twist, I've been searching for a faithful adaption that I could watch in one night. Judging by the overwhelming popularity of the David Lean film, I thought this might be what I was looking for. Dissapointed. In this nearly two hour film, Oliver has almost no lines at all, and his personality is lamentably underdeveloped. (Sweet and naive was all I got). Rose, Harry, Mrs. Maylie, and their family Docter were left out, and Monks -- a fascinating, eccentric character from the book and the BBC film -- was poorly potrayed and given altogether only about ten minutes of screentime (!) I WAS impressed by Mr. Lean's directing ability and how gracefully he paced the movie . . . no jumping around, no boring lags, etc; etc. Eceptionally good interpretations of Sykes, Fagin, and the Artful Dodger also add interest, and this Mr. Brownlow was the best I've seen in any Oliver Twist movie. Nancy was good, but has such a small part that I couldn't get "attatched" to her. All in all, however, I feel like I wasted my money. Too many of my favorite characters and parts were either left out or watered down. David Lean should have called it "Fagin's Gang" and made Oliver a subplot character.