Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist is a boy born into a parish workhouse in nineteenth-century England; his mother dies shortly after giving birth. Raised on meagre food and hard labour, he is sent out as an apprentice and treated badly enough that he runs away to London. There he meets the Artful Dodger, who leads him to Fagin, an older man who trains children to steal for him. For a time the kindly Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver into his home, but Fagin's violent associate Bill Sikes conspires to drag the boy back into the criminal world. The film is based on Charles Dickens's novel.

David Lean directed, working from a screenplay he wrote with Stanley Haynes; Ronald Neame produced. It was Lean's fifth film as director and his second adaptation of Dickens, following Great Expectations two years earlier, and it came before Hobson's Choice and the large-scale productions of his later career. John Howard Davies plays Oliver, with Robert Newton as Bill Sikes, Alec Guinness as Fagin, Kay Walsh as Nancy, Francis L. Sullivan as Mr. Bumble and Henry Stephenson as Mr. Brownlow. Thirty-seven performers are credited.

Made in the United Kingdom by J. Arthur Rank Organisation and Cineguild, the film runs 121 minutes and mixes adventure, crime and family drama with passages of comedy. On IMDb it holds 7.8 from about 15,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.6 from roughly 266 votes; the much larger IMDb sample points to a durable reputation rather than a passing one.