Great Expectations (1946)

A young boy (Anthony Wager) provides a kindness to an escaped convict (Finlay Currie) who is soon recaptured. Later, an eccentric woman (Martita Hunt) invites him to her estate so she can watch him play with her ward (Jean Simmons). The consequences of these events determine the boy's future as a young man (John Mills). Based on the classic novel by Charles Dickens and directed by David Lean (SUMMERTIME). This not quite faithful rendering of the Dickens novel is one of Lean's best films. Unlike so many films based on classic literary works, there's a vitality and texture that keeps the spirit of the novel so that one can overlook the handful of incidents that have been eliminated or changed from the novel's transition to the screen. The only major nuisance is the foisted happy ending which seems terribly at odds with all that preceded it. While Mills and Valerie Hobson (who plays the adult Simmons) don't make any false steps, they lack the perfection of their cast mates who seem to have walked right out of the pages of the novel. Most notably Hunt, Currie, Wager who's such a natural that he puts Hollywood's child actors of the era to shame and a young Alec Guinness as Mills' compatriot. Guy Green (who would later become a director himself) won an Oscar for the fleecy B&W cinematography and there's a beauty of a score by Walter Goehr. With Francis L. Sullivan, Bernard Miles, Torin Thatcher and Freda Jackson.