Les Grandes Espérances

It is quite nice. However, with a few minor exceptions, I generally don't have much contact with English cinema. Often their older and contemporary stuff is so disembodied that I prefer to go back to Dickens. Which, on the other hand, wouldn't be so strange if, for example, this famous version wasn't fifth in the BFI top chart. So let them dream their dream of cinema that has resisted Hollywood in every way. So far, I've embraced more so the version with York from the 1970s, and the one transplanted to the present in the late 1990s. The new BBC series looks good but it’s less believable in terms of acting, whereas the 2012 feature-length version is more interesting. I reacted awkwardly to the 1930s adaptation, but I'm looking forward to the BBC classic from the 1990s. And as I search my memory, there must have been another version from the 1980s on Hallmark. I could probably even figure out why this version doesn't work for me, but the contemporary Jane Eyre (1944) does work for me. But is that really necessary? Dickens’s famous novel from 1860-1861 is so attractive and offers so many major themes to be explored that filmmakers will probably never get enough of it. (27/01/2013)

I do not really like Charles Dickens' stories, but with the film "Great Expectations" you simply cannot deny that it is good. It is well made, well acted, and it has scenes that touch you, even if you are not a fan of Dickens. It shows here that these stories about orphans and poor people who ultimately make it somewhere by chance have meaning and are good. (03/10/2014)