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estella joe pip The novel Great Expectations has always appealed to me and I'm not sure why. I'm not an orphan nor have I ever run into an escaped convict in a marsh. If something of that sort had happened to me as a child it wouldn't be easily forgotten. Nor as a child was I ever asked to entertain an eccentric old woman and her protege. Still something about the book made me want to read it at least four times in my life and only two of those times was due to a class that I took. Maybe the idea that one can never expect who to trust in life says something to me. Or maybe I like the idea of fortune coming from unexpected places. This morning after work I saw the David Lean film version of the book from 1946. The only two people in the cast that I recognized were a young Jean Simmons and a young Alec Guinness who wasn't obvious to me until he turned his head a certain way. Seeing him as Herbert Pocket was something of a surprise. Oh, I knew from scanning the credits that he was in the movie, but it didn't say what part he played. Until I saw the movie I thought that he might play Jaggers the lawyer or maybe even Pip. One review that I read said that the movie probably would have been better with Guinness as Pip and I can see what they mean. The actor that played the adult Pip was far too old for the role. Alec was much closer in age to the character and did quite well as Herbert. I also wish that they had chosen a more attractive woman to play the older Estella. Jean Simmons was lovely as the younger version, but the actress playing the grown version was not good looking. I couldn't see her a femme fatale. I doubt that when they made the film anyone would have guessed that years later David Lean and Alec Guinness would get together again to make The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. I've seen the Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow version of Great Expectations and in some ways I preferred it to the Lean version. There was better chemistry between Ethan and Gwyneth than the two principals in the 1946 production. Robert DeNiro also did a good job as Magwitch in that same version. |