Fleeing from the corruption and abuse he receives, Oliver Twist, a young orphan kind boy, who lives in the workhouse, where he works hard and takes nothing, struggles against coping with the thieves he has to stay with.
Mistrust a movie with too many close-ups of Bisto Kid children and doleful dogs: they suggest a director cleverly boxing his way out of some very tight script corners.
The focus of the movie is so wide, and the logistics of the production so heavy, that Oliver himself, dutifully played by 9-year-old Mark Lester, gets flattened out and almost lost, as if he had been run over by a studio bulldozer.
In adapting Lionel Bart's lavish musical for the screen, director Carol Reed tempered the sticky sentimentality with suitably Dickensian scenes of squalor.
Reed is craftsman enough to make an efficient family entertainment out of Lionel Bart's musical, but not artist enough to put back any of Dickens' teeth which Bart had so assiduously drawn.
After a season of watching inane twitching in the name of dance, the viewer is most happily greeted by Onna White's choreography, an exuberant step-by-step exploration of Victorian zeal.
Even if you're not a fan of the musicals, Oliver is so witty, so bright and so endearing that even the iciest viewer should start melting in its corona.
