Celebrating Dickens on film

For many, winter in Halifax often seems truly “the worst of times”, but the Dalhousie Art Gallery is countering the weather with timely instalments of the “best” – a series of film adaptations of the works of Charles Dickens.

“Dickens attacked and illuminated the social conditions of his time,” says Ron Foley MacDonald, who selected the screening list with guidance from gallery personnel. “He was a very socially engaged writer whose influence we feel not just at Christmas time.”

Such social commentary is visible in films from Carol Reed’s 1986 musical Oliver! (Twist’s frying-pan-to-fire adventure moves him from the workhouse to a gang of Victorian juvenile delinquents) to the 1935 adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, directed by Jack Conway and featuring a de-Sherlocked Basil Rathbone (for those unfamiliar with the story, the guillotine plays a prominent off-screen role).

Celebrating a bicentennial

Dickens received his own Gallery screening series for multiple reasons: a similar series of Jane Austen adaptations a few years ago proved popular, and furthermore, this week marked Dickens’ bicentennial (the writer was born on February 7, 1812). Mr. MacDonald also points to the popularity of Dickensian twists (pun intended) in modern culture (pun intended): “the best television right now… it’s Dickensian, because it has a huge sprawling cast, [with] story arcs go on for a very long time.” Most importantly, “if [Dickens is] not the greatest writer of all time, he’s certainly really close.”

Mr. MacDonald, who also works for the Atlantic Film Festival and taught film history at NSCAD, has been selecting film series for the Dalhousie Art Gallery since 1988. “We try to show stuff that isn’t going to show here,” he explains of the selection process, since the closest thing Halifax has to a permanent art house theatre is the Empire Oxford.

“We’re trying not to be too obscure, but Wormwood’s isn’t here anymore… we’re acutely aware that we’re in the middle of a university, and this is a cultural event for students, of course… there’s an academic element to it, but also, this is very much for general audiences. And that’s a balance that we always have to strike.”

Making the cut

Selections for the gallery’s Dickens series had to shine to get past Mr. MacDonald. “What’s interesting is what we didn’t show,” he muses. “There were fifty Christmas Carols, ten Oliver Twists, nine David Copperfields… it’s been a lot of fun to sort of wade through this.”

In total, 10 adaptations, plus a bonus pre-Christmas screening of Alister Simm’s A Christmas Carol, made the cut. Selections were made on the basis of quality, variety, and Nova Scotian connections: for instance, Oliver! was choreographed by a one-time Inverness native and dirty-Thirties heartthrob David Manners. If you’re a horror movie buff, you might remember him from Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931), in which he starred as John Harking opposite the immortal Bela Lugosi.

Other highlights of the series include auteur Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist (2005) and Simon Curtis’ David Copperfield (1999) which features a pre-Potter Daniel Radcliffe in the title role.

Screenings for the Dalhousie Art Gallery’s “Two Centuries of Charles Dickens” series will be held on Wednesday nights from January to April at 8 p.m. Admission is free. (Yes, free.) For more information, visit the Dalhousie Art Gallery’s website.