Roman Polanski makes a movie called Oliver Twist that is really about the greatness of Oliver Reed

There are no young adults in Roman Polanski's new version of Oliver Twist.

There are children, a few teenagers---including, interestingly, the prostitutes Nancy and Bet---everybody else is either deep into a hard middle age or very old.  Even the policemen are elderly, as if 50 was the minimum age at which a man could be considered for the job.

The 12 year old and I went to see it last night.  He liked it.  I was alternately bemused, baffled, amused, and caught up in it and entertained.  I'll probably write a review later.  Right now I'm interested in the effect of the film's strange age-ism.

I don't know where Polanski was going with this, if he was going anywhere.  Maybe he was trying to make a point about the harshness of life in early Victorian England: It robbed people of their youth and made them old almost before they stopped being children.  It's a big change from Dickens' novel, though, which while it has at its center a child and the tug of war over his soul between two old men, Fagin and Mr Brownlow, is full of youth.  Besides Nancy, who is probably no more than 19, but a 19th Century 19, a grownup, not like the movie's 21st Century 16 or 17 year old Nancy, who is a child forced by Fate and circumstance to act like a grownup, there are the young lovers Harry and Rose, Oliver's villainous step-brother Monks, and, hovering above it all and haunting every scene and shining out through the eyes of her orphaned son, the ghost of Oliver's young mother.

And then there is Bill Sikes.

Polanski dispenses with the subplots involving Harry and Rose---removing from the story an active hero and heroine and with them, well, activity, not to mention youth and beauty---and Monks' attempts to rob Oliver of his inheritance.  Oliver's mother is completely forgotten, except as a plot point in one scene, which is not the scene of Oliver's birth; the movie begins with Oliver already 9 and being delivered to the workhouse by Mr Bumble.  Every other adaptation of Oliver Twist begins with Oliver's mother dragging herself up to the gates of the workhouse on the night Oliver is born, and I guess Polanski wanted his movie to be different, although the strikingly different opening turns out to be about the only striking variation from the book or other adaptations.

But there are reasons all the others begin with that scene, besides the fact that that's how the novel starts and it's an excuse to cast another pretty young actress.

The main one being that the whole rest of the story is the struggle to finish that young woman's act of heroism and see that her child is delivered safely into the world.  Just getting his body born doesn't do it.

So Oliver's mother's gone, Monks is gone, Harry and Rose are gone, and Nancy is regressed to a child-woman, which is interesting in its historical implications but, considering the reason Roman Polanski isn't making movies in the United States anymore, also a bit creepy.

Which leaves Bill Sikes.

Polanski's made him middle-aged---and short.  He's cast Jamie Foreman as Sikes and Foreman is pushing 50 and looks it.  Life as a thief has been hard on him, worn him to a frazzle, in fact.  He looks ready for the Old Thugs' Retirement Home and in a number of scenes he looks shurnken, shriveled, and wasting away before our eyes, ready to pull back into his coat like a turtle and leave his hat sitting on top of his collar.

In the novel, Sikes occupies the place of a hero.  He's active, skillful, intelligent, adventurous, bold, brave, and driven by a personal code, not of honor, by any means, but a code of manly pride, at least.  He's a bad guy, dangerous, bloody-minded, vicious, and heartless.  He cares only for himself and whatever tender feelings he has for Nancy---and he has some---are based entirely on how well she cares for him.  He's a villain, but you can see why in the world of the thieves he's looked up to as heroic.  In fact, he even takes on the role of a true hero, temporarily, and late in the novel, after he's murdered Nancy and when he's wandering the countryside discovering he still has a conscience---he joins a crowd fighting a fire and dashes in and out of the burning house several times to rescue people trapped inside.

We can see why the Dodger and Charlie Bates admire him and want to grow up to be like him, and we can see that Oliver, with all his virtues perverted, will become a Bill Sikes himself, if he's not rescued from Fagin.

Jamie Foreman isn't bad as Sikes, and he's not as ridiculous in the part as Tim Curry was in a TV adaptation I saw a long time ago.  It was silly to have Curry, still famous only for playing Dr Frank N. Furter in Rocky Horror Picture Show, looking up a full foot to scowl menacingly at George C. Scott's Fagin, who acted frightened but who looked as though if he put a thumb on the top of Curry's head could drive him down into the floor like a tack.

Foreman's not the least bit heroic.  He's just a run of the mill thug.  And he's not at all imposing.  It's hard to see how he could scare anybody, even Nancy and the boys.  He keeps Nancy in line by waving his club and threatening to sic his dog on her, but it's clear that in a fair fight she could hold her own against him, and late in the movie the Artful Dodger tackles him, knocks him to the ground, and pummels him pretty good before Sikes is able to roll out from underneath him and Fagin pulls the Dodger away.

In short, there is no reason in the world for Nancy to have devoted her life to the man.  It's possible she'd be too scared to leave him.  But a hundred other guys in her circle could easily take her away from this Sikes and do for him good if he put up a fuss about it.

(Also, allowing a 30 year age difference between his pair of lovers was probably not the most self-aware casting call Polanski could have made.)

Foreman's bringing nothing special to the part, and taking a lot away from it to boot, makes Polanski's choosing him for it a very strange decision.  It's made stranger by the casting of Mark Strong as Sikes' sometime partner in housebreaking, Toby Crackitt.  Strong is made comically villainous by a Bozo-esque mop of red hair and a silly set of false teeth, appropriate for the pretentious and vain Flash Toby.  But I've seen Strong without makeup and playing the role of a heroic villain.  He's tall, dark, charismatic and menacingly sexy, and a youthful looking 42 as opposed to Foreman's severely weathered 47.  Which means that Polanski looked at Strong, looked at Foreman, and, what, didn't see the difference?  It's almost as though what happened was that he cast Strong as Sikes and Foreman as Crackitt and things got all mixed up in the dressing room and they came out wearing each other's costumes, at which point the assitant director just shrugged and said, "Too late to fix it.  Camera's rolling," and hustled them out onto the set where Polanski failed to spot the impromptu role swap.

But as I was watching the movie, I wasn't thinking of what it would have been like if Strong had played the part.  I was thinking of what it was like when Oliver Reed did it.

The movie version of the musical Oliver! is pretty good.  A little too sunny and clean, and having a cute, cuddly Fagin raises thematic problems that are never dealt with in a satisfying way---life among Fagin's boys is meant to appear to Oliver to be a lot more jolly and secure than life in the workhouse, but it shouldn't appear to be a whole lot more jolly and attractive to the audience than life with Mr Brownlow.  But the songs are good, the acting's excellent---particularly Jack Wild as the Dodger and Ron Moody as Fagin.

And then there's Oliver Reed's Sikes.

Reed was 30 at the time and his drinking hadn't begun to show on  him at all.  (The Siren took a look at the effect of hard living on the faces and careers of a number of great British actors, including Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, and Oliver Reed.)  He wasn't just handsome.  He was close to beautiful, in a dark, dangerous, brooding way.  And when Nancy sings that she would stick with him as long as he needs her, you understand why.  You understand why this Sikes would make a girl sing.  And you understand why she'd give her life for him rather than live without him.

And you understand why she is absolutely terrified of him.

Foreman's Sikes yells all the time.  Reed's Sikes' practically whispers his whole way through the film.  Yet there is far more menace in a single glance from Reed than in all of Foreman's fist-waving and club pounding, kicking and screaming.

To me, Reed always came across as the most dangerous man alive.  This made him awfully difficult to cast well.  He was too handsome and heroic looking to play your average movie villain, and too goddamn full of barely repressed violence and rage to play an appealing hero.  His two best roles were, therefore, Sikes, the villain who could have been a hero, and Athos in The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, a hero who's as callous, bloody-minded, and deadly as any villain, and who in one way goes even farther than Sikes in awfulness---Sikes beats the woman who loves him to death and then is haunted by his conscience; Athos coolly orders the woman he loves executed and then watches without a twinge as she's rowed out into the middle of a lake, beheaded, and dumped into the water.

And given Reed's performance up to that point, it comes as no surprise that he can do this.  One of my favorite scenes among all my favorite scenes in all my favorite movies is in The Four Musketteers when Reed's Athos confronts Faye Dunaway's Milady de Winter and promises that he will kill her if she continues to plot against D'Artagnan.  He is so deadly serious and at the same time so compelling that Dunaway is driven to playing actual passion for once---she is swooning with desire as well as fear, and almost gives the impression that if he were to pull the trigger on the pistol he's pointing at her at the moment she would welcome it and die having an orgasm.  That's all Reed's doing.  He could make looking at a woman an act of rape.

Late in his career, Reed showed he could have been a great character actor.  I loved him as Captain Billy Bones in a TV movie of Treasure Island that starred Charlton Heston and a very young Christian Bale.  But that was another part that mixed up heroism with villainy.  You could see that before rum and illness took hold of him, Billy Bones was a pirate to be reckoned with and even admired, like two other movie pirates who also always insist on being called Captain, Peter Blood and Jack Sparrow.

This is why I have always thought that somebody missed a bet, and Reed missed out on the role he was born for, when Roger Moore was cast to replace Sean Connery as James Bond.

Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Bronson played Bond as a smoothie who had learned to be a thug when he had to be.  Bronson plays Bond as if he's tortured by this.  Dalton played him as corrupted by it.  Moore, making a wise choice, played it as just a bother.

But Connery's bond was a thug who had learned how to be a smoothie.  Giving him a license to kill was just accepting ahead of time the inevitable result of any job he was sent on.  And that's how I think Reed would have played it.

Which ends what I have to say about Bill Sikes and Oliver Reed and brings up the new James Bond.

I was convinced that Clive Owen would replace Brosnan in the part.  I picked him out for it when I saw him in Gosford Park.  He was riveting.  And suitably suave and dangerous. Another thug who'd learned to be a smoothie.  I have a good track record for picking out James Bonds too.  While Moore was still doing the movies, I  predicted Timothy Dalton would be next and that Pierce Brosnan would follow him. I did so!   Ask the blonde.

I did not and would not have predicted Daniel Craig.

Who is this guy?

He looks as if somebody in the James Bond franchise office said, "You know what would be a funny change?  If we made Bond look like one of those English professors freshman girls swoon over him when he recites poetry but who turns out to be absolutely devoted to his wife."

Ah well.

Maybe he'll be this century's George Lazenby.  One Bond and he's out.

On the other hand, he tested well.

And he's got to be better than two other actors I read were seriously considered for and considering playing Bond.

Jude Law.

And Ewan McGregor.

"The name's Kenobi.  Obi-wan Kenobi."

Then again, maybe McGregor could have pulled it off, too short for Bond as he is.

The most interesting thing in the final two Star Wars movies was the suggestion that when he didn't have to drag Anakin around with him, Obi-wan was leading the life of a Jedi Philip Marlowe.

But that's another post.

Comments

[coturnix]

Too early in the morning, Lance. PolanSKi misspelled several times....(sorry, bro).

[Lance]

Coturnix,

Thanks for the catch. I think I mis-typed all of them! My right index finger is just a much faster typist than my left ring finger.

[Jennifer]

Your talk of Roman Polanski made me remember that “The Fearless Vampire Killers” was on TMC last week. I was not able to see it, but was thinking of how much I loved that movie as a kid. I caught it one night when my best friend and I were having an overnight and were planning on watching another scary movie. I was probably 11 at the time. I remember being amazed by the movie… it wasn’t just scary, but it was it was funny. I remember thinking that my friend and I had made a discovery and surely we were the only ones who “got it”. We were in that stage of knowing just enough and of being certain that no adults knew as much as we did. As I said, I did not get a chance to watch the movie again last week and haven’t seen it for decades. I wonder if it would hold up or if my fond memories of it would fade if I watched it as an adult. When I saw it the first few times, I did not know as much about Polanski as I do now so I wonder if that will color my reaction as well. Same for Oliver. I think the one that is most indelibly etched in my mind is the Mark Lester/Jack Wild version. Of course Jack Wild just makes me think of H R Puffinstuff… but I digress… As for Bond, I have to admit I have never seen an entire Bond movie which my husband cannot believe. I know they said the most recent pick is the first blonde, but I always thought of Moore as a dirty blonde.

[PZ Myers]

Oh, man, Oliver Reed...you're right, he was awesomely menacing. Another role you didn't mention was Tommy; creepy and nasty, but you had no problem understanding why Ann Margret would marry him. He would have been an excellent Bond. Too bad that opportunity passed him by.

[The Countess]

Oliver Reed was one of my favorite actors when I was a kid. I always thought he would have been perfect as Heathcliff in "Wuthering Heights". He was perfectly cast as Athos in the "Musketeers" movies.

[mrs. norman maine]

Take it back about Ewan or I'm going to boycott yo' ass like you was some American Doll. Ewan would do just fine as Bond. Go watch him in "Down With Love" and tell me he can't do suave. (Of course, he may not want to do another franchise after his less than joyous experience in SW.)

But I'm glad you made a sly allusion to Mr. PolanSKi's legal woes. If you didn't I would've had to: "Consider yourself...18/ Consider yourself.... spread out on the furniture..."

But let's not go there.

[Exiled in NJ]

It seemed to me that it took over-the-top directors to use Oliver Reed to best effect. Richard Lester's Musketeer duo, and then as a properly menacing young Bismarck in Royal Flash, a wonderful film that has sadly disappeared. If anything, Four Musketeers is superior to Three, since Lester does not have to follow the book.

Find Ken Russell's The Devils for another great Reed role, and of course, Russell used him in Women In Love. My late wife thought the young Reed the sexiest man she'd ever seen.

Loved your comment about Tim Curry; for some real scenery chewing, catch him playing Richelieu in the awful 1993 version of Three Musketeers.

So right about eyes: Jude Law's are too vicious to make the transformation to Bond, but the Craig who played Connor Rooney in Road to Perdition has nothing behind those blues but weakness.

I treasure my tape of Polanski's Macbeth.

[Campaspe]

Oh my, you bring up so much in this post! Oliver Reed was an excellent actor, a pure film actor, which is rare in Britain. I want to see The System (a.k.a. The Girl-Getters) which is supposed to be very good, and also I'll Never Forget Whats 'Is Name. From what I've seen, his best work is in Women in Love, and I have a lot of affection for the admittedly silly The Assassination Bureau (which has appeal for men in the form of Diana Rigg). The Assassination Bureau is very much a Bond-ish role for Reed, and I think you are right, he could have been marvelous. But by the time the role came up, in the early 1970s, he was already a bad bet in terms of reliability and his waistline was already shot. Thanks very much for the link, by the by. That was a visual before-and-after collage I'd been meaning to do for a long while.

As for Oliver Twist - you didn't mention how Fagin was handled? Alec Guinness was terrifying in the part in David Lean's (superb & probably definitive) version, but debate goes on to this day about whether he made the role even more anti-Semitic than Dickens wrote it. (Whether Dickens was personally anti-Semitic as a 21st-century person understands the term is something I'd love to hear your thoughts on, one day.)

Now I think I must go back to the novel. I remember Sikes as a total sociopath, his sole redeeming feature an off-handed affection for his dog. The running into the burning house at the end was, in my memory, not so much an act of redemption as a desperate attempt to lose himself in physical danger as he is haunted by having murdered Nancy. And remember Lance, it is AFTER the fire that he calls to his dog ... and the animal won't come. He's achieved no real redemption, in my view.

Dickens does refer repeatedly to Nancy as "the girl." I don't know how old that makes her, in the eyes of a Victorian reader. I agree that Polanski should have more sense; it must be another case of "epater le bourgeois."

Sorry for this long comment, but one last thing. So Polanski includes Charlie Bates? does he also preserve Dickens' repeated references to "Master Bates"? One prof I had said drily that he figured this "belonged to the humor of the unconscious."

[Exiled in NJ]

And here I thought Master Bates was the young man who ran a motel on a forgotten stretch of road out west. He adored his mother, you know.

[Claire]

I'd be very interested in a LM review of this movie... I have to admit I'm highly skeptical. My brother (who is one of my flatmates) went through a Polanski phase last summer. (He went through several odd auteurs last summer, before he got a job, getting to know the surly movie snobs at our cheap rental place around the corner.) I watched "Fearless Vampire Killers," and I'm willing to bet, Jennifer, that it won't hold up to your 11-year old perspective. The one to *really* stay away from, though, is The Tenant. Eesh. What a work of complete ego. He's trying very hard to be Hitchcock and it's really terrible. I've been itching to watch Chinatown again, though. Man, that movie is fantastic.

[Lance]

C, You're right. Sikes isn't redeemed. And it could be argued that what he's doing at the fire isn't heroic, it's suicidal. He's trying to damn himself---fire, hell, yadda yadda. But I think Dickens means him to be seen as acting with true heroism; we're meant to admire the person he might have been if poverty and Fagin hadn't gotten hold of him when he was a child.

Charlie Bates is definitely an important character in the movie, although Polanski gives his big scene to the Dodger.

Claire, If you didn't know Polanski directed it, you wouldn't know Polanski directed it. I think I will do a review.

Mrs M, I'm a McGregor fan. But he can't do Bond. He's too short. And I say that as someone who is not all the much taller than him. 5' 10" doesn't cut it. Bond has to be at least 6'2". He has to physically dominate his scenes. Plus, if you cast McGregor, you couldn't cast any actress over 5 foot 6 and think what that would do to the ranks of the Bond girls.

Jennifer, leave this page and don't come back until you've seen at least Thunderball, Goldfinger, and the first 15 minutes of The Spy Who Loved Me.

[Matt]

I loved Oliver Reed in Hammer's "Curse of the Werewolf." He was also good in "Prisoner of Honor," a very good HBO film about the Dreyfus Affair.

[Jennifer]

Lance, my husband reminded me that I did indeed see Goldfinger in August of this year. I was under the weather though so I'm not surprised I had forgotten. I seem to remember Sean in some really scary terrycloth unitard/toddler beach outfit... or maybe it was my fever talking. Anyhow, I will indeed watch Thunderball, etc.

Claire- thank you for the warning. I think I will indeed stick with my fond memories.

[Campaspe]

I will definitely take another look at Sikes, with that thought in mind. Dickens was such a humanist and he often manages at least a drop of sympathy for even his vilest characters. Reed's performance as Sikes was brilliant, but I don't think he gives off even a touch of the heroic in that movie, aside from his heart-stopping sex appeal. In fact he is so frightening that at time he seems to have wandered in from David Lean's version of twenty years earlier.

[Red Tory]

I wonder how long we'll have to endure the oh-so-clever "James Blonde" references in the tabloid magazines?

Daniel Craig is a weird pick. Personally, I would have chosen Jude Law.

Seems odd that the first film out of the gate with this new Bond is "Casino Royale"... Wasn't that a spoof?

[mrs. norman maine]

Tory -- Thank you! Better a short Bond than a blonde bond, in my book. (You would think he'd dye his hair but so far nobody has said he will.) And yes, I've already heard or read "Craig -- Daniel Craig" too many times to count in the last week or so.

And Lance, if EMcG can court the sublime Nicole Kidman without looking foolish, surely he can be a credible James Bond -- even if he has to stand on boxes.

[Walter]

"Casino Royale" was the first of the James Bond books. Ian Fleming sold the rights when he was broke to, I think, CBS and they made a serious TV movie in the 50's. Then, Charlie Feldman got the rights and made a spoof when he couldn't get Sean Connery.

Daniel Craig has starred in some small English movies including "Enduring Love", "The Mother" and "Layer Cake" that are OK. He is a very good actor but he has very little screen presence.

[Claire]

I have to agree that Ewan is too short and not menancing enough. I was hoping the new Bond would be Clive Owen as well. Have you seen Croupier? The man can wear a tux. And Jude Law is too foppish for the role. He's too pretty. At least Daniel Craig isn't too well known. I think that weighs in his favor, for some reason. I won't be thinking of his previous roles when he takes up the MI6 mantle.

[Exiled in NJ]

Jennifer: Having been 20 or so when the Bond film phenomenon broke, I can say that reaction to Thunderball was more Peggy Lee than anything else. Friends and I went to center-city Philly to see it. Back then all films opened downtown. Later at the diner I remember that sense of 'Is that all there is?' After 'Russia with Love' and 'Goldfinger,' Thunderball was a letdown, more gimmick than cool. We saw Goldfinger first-run in New York; it played 24 hours at the theater in midtown. After viewing it, Connery became 'my man, James Bond.'

And now for something completely different: how about Rupert Everett as Bond????!!!!! He has the looks, that is for sure, and he would bring a whole new sensibility to the series.

[KathyF]

I think Brad Pitt would have made a nice Bond. Plus, he lives out here near Pinewood and it would be an easy commute. That is, if you're serious about a blond Bond.

But Daniel? What were they thinking?

[Campaspe]

Can you stand one more Oliver Reed comment? Found this at oliverreed.net, one of the best fan sites I have ever seen (and I have seen way too many). Whoever runs this place has compiled an astonishing archive of Reed's career in both acting and raising hell. Anyway, here is the bit, on page 5 under "Trivia and Anecdotes":

Oliver Reed Missed Out On Bond
15 August 2000 (WENN)
Movie legend Oliver Reed missed out on playing superspy James Bond because of his love of alcohol and fighting. A new biography of the star has uncovered a letter from Bond mastermind Albert R. Broccoli outlining how close he came to replacing Sean Connery in the role. Broccoli wrote, "With Reed we would have had a far greater problem to destroy his image and remold him as James Bond We just didn't have the time or money to do that." According to Cliff Goodwin, author of the book Evil Spirits, "Oliver was probably within a sliver of being cast as Bond." He adds, "But by 1968 his affairs were public and he was already drinking and fighting - as far away from the refined Bond image as you could get."

So they were considering him even before poor George Lazenby, and not after "Diamonds Are Forever" as I thought. Reed would have had just the right darkness for that very, very dark Bond movie.

[Red Tory]

Regarding Oliver Reed, I'm surprised no one has mentioned his last role as the cynical, shagged out ex-gladiator turned self-serving fight trainer Antonius Proximo. (Gotta love the name.) It's hard not to think that role was almost written with him specifically in mind. According some accounts, Reed had been relaxing at a Valetta pub in Malta between filming and suffered a fatal heart attack after reputedly consuming 3 bottles of rum and defeating five sailors at arm wrestling. It's said in the original script he was to have escaped, but with his death... well, that had to be re-worked. Art imitating life and visa versa.

[Kevin Wolf]

Reed is one of those actors who was around long enough (though clearly it could have been longer) and whose output is erratic enough that some think he can be easily dismissed.

But the good movies are there and he's solid in them. It's nice to see this appreciation, Lance.

[Jennifer]

Claire, "Foppish"! What an excellent word! I don't think Jude Law would make a good Bond either. No, I am not an expert in Bond, but I am aware of the men who played him. That is a perfect word. I kept thinking any number of words that didn't quite do it, but foppish is it.

Exiled, was it Peggy Lee pre or post "Fever"? Also, I love Rupert Everett as Bond. I think that would have indeed taken the franchise into an interesting dimension. Instead, I guess they are merely stepping out of the box in hair color choice.

[Lance]

C,

That's great! Thanks for digging that up. See, folks, can I pick a Bond or can I pick a Bond?