Review of Oliver Twist

This seldom-seen television movie from the early eighties does the best of any adaptation(up to that time)of capturing the dispair and wretchedness of life for the poor in 19th century London. George C. Scott's Fagin is oily and vile, and Tim Curry's Sikes is chillingly psychotic. The sets and photography convey a sense of grim poverty and desolation all but absent from most versions. Dickens wrote a Victorian horror story of abuse, starvation, and isolation, and this film does his grim novel justice.