Roman Polanski directs the classic Charles Dickens’ story of a young orphan boy who gets involved with a gang of pickpockets in 19th Century London. Abandoned at an early age, Oliver Twist (Barney Clark) is forced to live in a workhouse lorded over by the awful Mr. Bumble, who cheats the boys of their meager rations. Desperate yet determined, Oliver makes his escape to the streets of London. Penniless and alone, he is lured into a world of crime by the sinister Fagin (Academy-Award winner Sir Ben Kingsley) — the mastermind of a gang of pint-sized pickpockets. Oliver’s rescue by the kindly Mr. Brownlow is only the beginning of a series of adventures that lead him to the promise of a better life.
Polanski’s film is visually exact and detailed without being too picturesque. This is not Ye Olde London, but Ye Harrowing London, teeming with life and dispute. The performances are more vivid and edgy than we might suspect; Kingsley’s Fagin is infinitely more complex than in the usual versions. Jamie Foreman’s Bill Sykes has a piggish, merciless self-regard. Leanne Rowe, as Nancy, becomes not a device of the plot but a resourceful young woman whose devotion to Bill is outlasted by her essential goodness. And Barney Clark, who was 11 when the film was made, is the right Oliver, a child more acted against than acting. Oliver Twist was Dickens’ first proper novel, after the episodic Pickwick Papers. In it he found his voice by listening to the memories of the child he had been. Polanski I think is listening to such memories as well. – Roger Ebert
Starring Ben Kingsley, Barney Clark, Jamie Foreman, Edward Hardwicke, Mark Strong.