DVD/150: MADELEINE (David Lean, 1950)

Ah the long-standing problem of film directors and their leading lady wives... David Lean filmed MADELEINE as a wedding present for Ann Todd after their marriage the previous year but one suspects that a bracelet might have been better; Lean thought it "the worst film I ever made".

Based on a notorious 1857 murder trial in Glasgow, Madeleine Smith was the daughter of a respectable middle-class family who had a secret two-year affair with a French man called Emile L'Angelier.

When Emile demanded marriage, Madeleine tried ending the affair and demanded the return of her love letters. A month later, Emile was dead from Arsenic poisoning... and Madeleine had recently purchased some from a chemist.

Madeleine walked free from her trial after the jury returned a verdict of Not Proven, her guilt or her innocence not conclusively proved.

Lean's film looks marvellous but is remote and uninvolving.

Shelf or charity shop?  On the shelf only because it's part of a David Lean box-set.  The film remains watchable due of the wonderful contributions of frequent Lean collaborators: Guy Green's cinematography, John Bryan's art direction and Margaret Furse's Victorian costumes.  While the show-room dummy performances of Norman Wooland and Ivan Desny fade while you watch them, the real flaw in the film is the dead-eyed glacial performance of Ann Todd.  An actress who projected the heat of a mortuary slab, she was simply too old for the role and one wonders how much better it could have been with a younger actress like Joan Greenwood, Jean Simmons, Jean Kent or even Deborah Kerr.

DVD/150: OLIVER TWIST (David Lean, 1948)

Two years after GREAT EXPECTATIONS, David Lean returned to Dickens for a second time with OLIVER TWIST.

Lean and co-adapter Stanley Haynes stripped away any characters that pulled focus from Oliver's perilous adventures which leaves a clear narrative for Dickens' characters to come to fully-rounded life.

John Howard Davies was a perfect Oliver, never fading off screen even among the actors around him all giving full-blooded, characterful perforrmances.

Anthony Newley is a wonderful Artful Dodger while Kay Walsh (then Mrs David Lean) is a fiery Nancy - her murder scene remains as terrifying as when I first saw it as Bill Sykes' bulldog frantically scratches at the door to escape her screams.

Robert Newton is an average Bill Sykes but all are eclipsed by Alec Guinness' Fagin. Just 34, he is unforgettable - Lean requested a bigger nose for him as the original make-up looked more like Jesus!

Shelf or charity shop?  A definite shelf. Controversy erupted when it was released - it was banned for two years in the USA as the character of Fagin was judged anti-semitic (which probably explains why it received no Academy Award nominations). When finally released seven minutes of Guinness' performance were edited out.  There were calls to ban it in Germany and in Israel too - but it was banned in Egypt for making Fagin too sympathetic!  OLIVER TWIST is memorable also because of the contributions of Guy Green's cinematography and John Bryan's production design, both returning after GREAT EXPECTATIONS.  Speaking of which Kay Walsh - who had suggested the way that film should end - here was responsible for OLIVER TWIST's moody opening as Oliver's mother battles a storm across the moors to reach the workhouse.