Dickens's creation is roughly divided into four stages, and it is generally considered that the third stage of his creation is the most important, because this is the mature stage of his creation, which has reached a certain height both politically and literarily. This period is also the prosperous period of his creation, "Dong Bei Father and Son", "David Copperfield", "Desolate Mountain Villa", "Difficult Times", "Little Duli", "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Great Prospects" are all works of this period, of which "Difficult Times" and "Tale of Two Cities" are often introduced as his representative works, in fact, the analysis of "Great Prospects" in human nature is also very worthy of attention.
"Great Prospects" is also translated as "Lone Star Blood Tears" (just like "Oliver Retreat" is also translated as "Orphans of the Mist"), but according to the content of the novel, "Great Prospects" is more accurate, and the book repeatedly mentions the "great future" of the protagonist Pip, and students who have read the original book know what a cruel and sad irony this is. In the face of the so-called "great future", the original simplicity is gradually encroached upon by vanity, and this "great future" is even an uncertain unknown.
Here, Xiaobian took out the 46th edition and the 74th edition to enjoy together.
Director: David Lane
Starring: John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Jane Simmons, Alec Guinness...
Production area: United Kingdom
Directed by: Joseph Hardy
Starring: Michael York, Sarah Mills, James Mason, Margaret Layton, Robert Morley, Anthony Quill
Production Area: USA/UK
The story takes place in 19th-century England. When Pip was a 15-year-old child, both of his parents died and he lived with his sister and brother-in-law. Before Christmas, Pip goes to the cemetery to mourn his parents and meets the jailbreaker McGoverich. Pip brought him cake to fill his hunger, which touched Macgvech, but in the end he was taken away by the police.
After Christmas, Pip was invited to the home of Miss Harvey Ham, the richest woman in the village. The old woman did not show up on her new wedding day, never took off her wedding dress again, and lived in memory for many years. Despite her wealth, she has never been happy, so she has always lived in resentment and has a quirky personality. When Pip enters the old house with a nervous mood, he meets Estella, the girl adopted by Miss Harvey Ham, and falls in love with her uncontrollably. But Estella was an arrogant and mean girl who didn't take Pip seriously at all. This saddened Pip, who was secretly determined to become a gentleman so that Estella would stop discriminating against him.
The opportunity finally came. Although Pip's brother-in-law was only a blacksmith and had no money to send him to school, a few years later, an unnamed man suddenly offered to sponsor Pip to live in London to live in the upper class. Pip came to London with great joy to learn how to socialize, how to dance, how to be a true gentleman. At this time, Pip clearly felt that he could no longer communicate smoothly with his brother-in-law who was a blacksmith, although his brother-in-law raised him and had a very good relationship.
Estella had now grown into a young girl who had returned from studying abroad. Pip finds her, only to find her constantly shuttling between many men and choosing one of them to become her husband. Pip was in excruciating pain. At this time, the person who funded Pip behind the scenes finally appeared, and he was Magwich, who had been rescued by Pip many years ago. He made a lot of money after escaping from prison again, and he wanted to thank him in the way he funded Pip. But this time Magwich was not as lucky as before, and he was caught by the police and died in prison. Pip's property was also confiscated and he was suddenly impoverished. Pip could not accept such a cruel reality and fell seriously ill.
After recovering, Pip took a hard look at himself and decided to start from scratch. A few years later, Pip became a gentleman with real wealth by his own efforts. He returned to his brother-in-law's house again to spend the year with his family for Christmas. Pip meets Estella, who is not happy in her old house, and learns that she has loved herself from the beginning, but she was adopted by Miss Harvey Ham to take revenge on the man, and she does not want Pip to be hurt before choosing to marry someone else. The emotions that had been hidden in the heart for many years finally broke out, and the pair of lovers finally came together.
Version 46 is black and white, and I personally believe that black and white has a unique advantage in creating a desolate or terrifying atmosphere. The film as a whole does not deviate from the original work, but only makes small changes in details, such as the early death of Pip's sister, Orrick's deletion, etc. Miss Hao Weixian is in place both in clothing and indoors, that is, people are too healthy, unlike the pathology of a person who has not seen the sun for more than twenty years, and Estella in the adulthood, the two looks generally good. The young Estella, played by Jane Simons, is very smart. When he was a child, Pip was also very cute, old and old,000, and the book described Joe as "wearing a dress is not as good as wearing overalls" in fact, it is also suitable for Pip to be an adult.
(The following illustrations use the 46th edition of stills)
This film is the most successful one of Dickens's works on the screen, and has been appreciated by audiences for many years. The film first faithfully reproduces the theme and character of the original book. Dickens's works have always praised the simplicity and sincerity of the laborers and lashed out at the selfishness and ruthlessness of the rich. The novel also presents this theme with the idea of gratitude and ingratitude.
In the film, Pip was often abused by his sister when he was young, but Joe was very concerned, loving and considerate of him. The film uses the sound-picture alignment editing technique when Pip is whipped, combining the whipping sound with Joe's reaction shots, thus showing Joe's deeply touching concern for Pip. Pip leaves Joe for London, and Joe is both happy and clinging to it.
He was well aware that there was an insurmountable gap between himself and the "superior", and that if Pip became a superior man, he would lose Pip; but he was still happy for Pip's future. Betty teaches Pip to read, but is dismissive of his intention to become a superior person so that Estella can treat each other as equals. Joe and Betty are happy and have their own dignity. After Pip's dream broke, he fell seriously ill and was still in debt, and they took him back to his hometown to take care of him carefully, give him warmth, and pay off his debts.
On the contrary, Miss Harvison, for the sake of Ichigo's old hatred of being abandoned by the groom, does not hesitate to manipulate Estella to take revenge on men, raising her into a cruel person from an early age, and growing up to let her marry the rich villain Jumer; on the other hand, she constantly instigates Estella to tease Pip, make Pip love her, and in the end break them up, and both become her victims. From this contrast, the film faithfully reproduces the spirit and character of Dickens's original work.
The film's condemnation of ingratitude is also profound. After Pip lived a superior life in London, Joe came to see him, and Pip felt that Joe was rustic and inappropriate for his identity, but could not maintain courtesy to receive him. Joe saw this and was very reserved. Only to see him carefully place his top hat on the mantelpiece, and the bracket was narrow, and the hat fell off; he wiped the hat with his sleeve and put it back in its place, and unfortunately fell again, and Joe chased it while holding the hat until it fell flattened in the basin on the table.
This comedic detail does not mock Joe, but rather shows Joe's keen sense that Pip's sense of being a superior person has made him unable to treat himself as an equal. Joe called Pip Mr. when he was leaving, and then couldn't help but call him an old friend, he said
"If you think of me as Joe's blacksmith, you won't look at me badly."
Choreographer Lane uses Joe's words to criticize Pip, who suffers from "snobbish disease". The original uses Pip's first-person approach of recalling the past as an adult, and there are many psychological activities that can be expressed freely, and Lane found a concise counterpart in the adaptation - the voiceover of adult Pip. When Pip learns that Joe has come to see him, for fear of embarrassing him, his mental activity is in the context of sound and painting, and Pip's inner monologue (voiceover) blames himself:
"I wanted to be a superior person, and I ended up being a snob."
This is the self-reproach of the adult Pip when he recalls the past, which is wonderful to appear and say, and helps to shape Pip's image, indicating that Pip was born humble after all, and did not lose his good nature. Pip returns to his hometown at Harwison's request, and along the way Joe's simple self-esteem deeply condemns him, and he intends to reminisce with Joe in his heart, but the more the stagecoach goes forward, the more hesitant he is, and the voice and image of the film are detached, and the picture shows him sitting in the car, but what he hears is many voices. Joe, Betty, Estella, and Harwison were all talking about him. He was ashamed to live in a blacksmith's shop, and his inner monologue (voice-over) criticized himself:
"There is no liar in the world than a man who deceives himself."
He still stayed at the Blue Wild Boar Hotel. Gratitude is an act of ingratitude. A fugitive who vowed to raise the child to be a superior man simply because he was aided by Pip during his extreme hunger showed the desire for love and kindness of the despised prisoner. The film's sympathy for the Macgway district recreates the novel's humanitarian spirit.
The Magway District's gratitude to Pip is also in contrast to Pip's ungratefulness to Joe. Pip's money, along with Estella, came from the inferiors he despised, rather than the high society he sought, and his snobbery was even more profoundly ironic. Unfortunately, Lane did not explain the relationship between the Magway District and scarface. In the original book, Scarface is the main culprit who instigated the crime of the Magway District (and the groom who abandoned Harwison), and because of his wealth, he later went unpunished.
Dickens's novels are cinematic, especially good at observing things from a child's point of view and subjective feelings. Lane makes good use of these depictions to create exaggerated images that are characteristic of Dickens, allowing the viewer to "share Pip's own exaggerated experience" (Lane).
For example, at the beginning of the film, When Pip meets the fugitive in the cemetery, the camera shoots the ancient tree like a strange person from The perspective of the little Pip, the thin and bony hands reach out to Pip, the wind howls, the little Pip jumps up and runs in fear, and the camera crashes into the fugitive with him. The subjective shots and sounds here give us the same feeling as Pip, who is so frightened that he flees, and we run away; he crashes into the fugitive, and we seem to hit the fugitive as well.
The fugitive threatens Pip with a large description, saying that if Pip does not comply, he will take Pip's heart and liver and roast it. There was another young man who was even more powerful than him, and even if he locked the door and covered his head with a quilt, he could climb in and tear him apart. Frightened, Pip had been thinking wildly all night and did not dare to sleep. In the film, Lane uses the voiceover's intimidating voiceover voiceover to match Pip's action of going to bed and being blinded to show the panic that he wants to escape and has nowhere to escape.
In a scene of stealing meatloaf downstairs, every noise of the stair slab seems to wake Up Mrs. Joe, and It frightens Pip. In the scene where Pip crosses a depression to deliver food to the fugitives, each cow seems to be counting down what he stole to catch him.
The film uses sound to make the audience experience the feeling of Little Pip being a "thief" with a weak heart. In these scenes, Dickens's depiction was originally very cinematic, and the psychological depiction of the child was also very brilliant, but it was Lane's creation to make the audience feel the child's thoughts in such a concise way with the picture. The film allows the audience to get the first impression of the Satis Mansion and Miss Harvison, which is also completed from the perspective of Pip Jr.
After Pip jr. was delivered to his destination, he stopped at 8:40 a.m. from Pip's eyes and thus from the pointer that allowed the audience to see the clock. Pip stopped in front of Miss Harwison's door and opened it for a long time. The scene he sees from his perspective, except that the temperature and mildew cannot be expressed in the film, completely reproduce the scene described in the novel. In Miss Harvison's dark room, candles glowed darkly, cobwebs and dust were everywhere, Bibles, white gloves, and beaded jewelry were on the dresser; there was a dusty, illegible wedding cake on the long dining table. The white wedding dress had turned gray. She described it as withered, hoarse, and intimidating.
The grotesque Miss Harvison in the film and her surroundings blend fantasy and reality better than fiction. In addition, there are two places where Pip's perspective is used to make the audience agree with his feelings: First, when Pip's sister's banquet begins, Pip is afraid of being discovered for stealing meatloaf. As his sister prepared to go get the meatloaf, he got up and opened the door to escape, crashing straight into the soldiers outside the door. At this time, the audience was unprepared and surprised like Little Pip. In another place, when the Magway District was visiting on a stormy night, When Pip opened the door, the camera was facing the Magway District from The Perspective of Pip, and suddenly saw the tall ominous black figure, wrapped in a scarf, with a black blindfold on his right eye, which frightened us a lot.
The film deletes some of the minor characters in the novel and their plot lines, making it seem compact. Some of the cutscenes are also transferred smoothly. For example, between Pip's beginning of learning from Joe and Jagger's visit to the door, the film skips a large part of the novel's narrative, and Pip tells Harwison that he can't play with Joe as an apprentice and jump directly to the scene of Jagg to the blacksmith shop. We hear him answering Jaeg's question, see the shadow of the big Pip thrown on the wall, and then see Mills, a shift that keeps Pip's change from being too abrupt.
In this shot Pip is still wearing a blacksmith around his waist, the next shot immediately switches to his feet, and then the camera rolls up to see him standing in front of the Sartis mansion in his new clothes. Pip's process of learning to be a superior person is also compressed into a set of pictures of learning dance, boxing, and swordsmanship. His instructions for dining etiquette were given in passing as Herbert told him about Harwison's past. Such compression and abridgement can not only refine the film, but also free up the capacity to play other necessary details, making the film appear richer and more branchless.