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The festival is organised in collaboration with St. James Cavalier and Heritage Malta to celebrate the bicentenary of Charles Dickens, one of the greatest British novelists of all times.
All films start at 7 pm and admission is free of charge. For bookings please call: 21 22 32 00/21 22 32 16.
If cinema, born 1895, was the child of Victorian visual technology and the entrancement of the eye, then the Victorian novel stood it god-parent. Dr. Joss Marsh points out that its direct ancestors were the photograph, the panorama, and the magic lantern; the circus and the melodramatic theatre; the railway, which turned the world into “moving pictures” and opened up touristic pleasures; the ghoulish waxwork and the tableau vivant; and the overwhelming, kinetic city. But it was from fiction that film inherited its mass audience, its social function, its plots, and its techniques of narration. And from no other author did film inherit so much as from the Victorian writer who most imaginatively absorbed the influences of those other ancestors: Charles Dickens.
Even those who have never read a Dickens novel have become familiar with his works through the mediums of film and television, as Dickens' stories and characters have remained so popular that he has become the most cinematic novelist of all time. Around 400 films and TV series have been made so far. Among the aspects that make his writing so well suited to the screen are the episodic structure, the clear definition of good and evil, the combination of social realism and the phantasmagorical, comedy and tragedy, and a cast of grotesques and eccentrics suitable to character actors.
The following films will be shown at St. James Cavalier Centre for Creativity:
25 January: A Tale of Two Cities (1958)
Ralph Thomas, 141 minutes
A memorable British film adaptation of Dickens’ tragic classic tale of love and noble self sacrifice set in the turbulence of 18th Century Paris during the French Revolution. Dirk Bogarde is perfectly cast as the doomed hero Sydney Carlton, a disillusioned lawyer whose world is turned upside down when events in France encroach on his decadent London life.
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin, Alfie Bass
17 March: Oliver! (1968)
Carol Reed, 144 minutes
A joyous and perhaps unfairly underrated film version of the stage musical play adapted from Dickens’ novel by Lionel Bart. Young Oliver is an orphan who escapes the cheerless life of the workhouse to take to the streets of 19th Century London. Stuffed full of magnificent songs and marvellously staged, this deservedly won veteran British director Carol Reed (The Third Man) an Academy Award in 1970, and plays fantastically well as a film for all ages.
Starring: Harry Secombe, Mark Lester, Ron Moody
18 April: Great Expectations (1946)
David Lean, 113 minutes
Arguably the greatest film adaptation of Charles Dickens’s work ever made, brilliantly realised by David Lean (the legendary British director of classics such as Lawrence of Arabia). With an outstanding cast this is a fabulous depiction of a poor boy’s rise from blacksmith’s apprentice to fashionable man-about-town in 19th Century London with dark secrets, suspense and thwarted romance all thrown in.
Starring: John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Alec Guinness
17 October: Pickwick Papers (1954)
Noel Langley, 109 minutes
Made during the mini flurry of British 1950s film adaptations of Dickens, this remains to date the only great version of Pickwick Papers for the big screen. Capturing the satiric atmosphere and picaresque rhythm of the varied adventures of a group of ill-assorted friends travelling around the country this is a delightful Dickens film.
Starring: James Hayter, Joyce Grenfell, Harry Fowler
14 November: Oliver Twist (1948)
David Lean, 110 minutes
David Lean’s second and almost equally outstanding foray into adapting Dickens is this dark thriller about an orphan’s escape from the workhouse to a child pickpocket gang, living in a thieves’ den in London led by the unforgettably grotesque crook, Fagin (portrayed with relish by the legendary Alec Guinness).
Starring: Robert Newton, Alec Guinness, Kay Walsh
13 December: A Christmas Carol (1951)
Brian Desmond Hurst, 86 minutes
A highly influential and possibly never bettered 1950s film version of Dickens’ Christmas classic, which also gave great British comic actor Alastair Sim - playing Scrooge - the role for which he will always be remembered.
Starring: Alastair Sim, Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison
On February 28 at 7pm, the Maritime Museum in Birgu will host a Victorian evening. The guests will be taken on a short tour of the museum which introduces Victorian Malta and Charles Dickens (tour conducted by the museum curator Mr Liam Gauci). The tour will be followed by a warm Victorian drink and a lecture by Prof. Raymond Agius entitled The loss of the Royal Charter: a Link between Dickens and a Maltese Seaman. The event will also include the screening of the extract of David Copperfield (1913) and Victorian snacks, such as Bovril sandwiches and mustard and pickle sandwiches, will be served.
Tickets (3 Euro) are available at all Heritage Malta sites in Malta and Gozo.
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