"Great Expectations" (1974)

Before there was a Hallmark Channel, there was the Hallmark Hall of Fame, one of the longest running anthology series in the history of television. In the era before cable TV, HHF brought countless film adaptations of famous literary works to viewers via commercial networks. Back in 1970, I remember seeing an adaptation of "Hamlet" starring then TV heartthrob Richard Chamberlain in the tile role. Chamberlain, who'd gained fame portraying the dashing titular character in the NBC series "Dr. Kildare," was eager to shed his post-op scrubs and sink his teeth into more serious drama. His much-praised interpretation of Shakespeare's famous Dane helped pave the way for a successful career transition to film (though he would return to TV in 1983 in what is, arguably, his most famous role, Fr. Ralph de Bricassart in "The Thorn Birds).

In the spirit of HHF - and, more so, in the hope of repeating Carol Reed's successful musical adaptation of another classic Dickens' novel, "Oliver Twist" (on Broadway and in film) - NBC embarked on a project to turn "Great Expectations" into a musical. That project, however, never materialized, and weeks into production, actors, producers, crew all agreed that the songs "interrupted the flow of the narrative" and were scrapped. The resulting drama, often (though, arguably unfairly) compared to David Lean's 1946 classic, suffers from what it is: a made-for-TV movie shot on a sound stage, with the usual cheesy, low-budget production quality, and sometimes painful pauses where commercials were intended for insertion.

I saw "Great Expectations" when it first aired in 1974, a still-impressionable teen who had discovered Dickens as a sixth-grader ("Oliver Twist" was an easy favorite), but my initial reaction to it contained none of the expertise (or baggage?) of critics who quickly dismissed it as a shadow of Lean's masterpiece from almost thirty years earlier. For me, watching this version of "Great Expectations" was much more personal: I'd read the novel for the first time as a high school freshman, so I was already hooked. If Oliver Twist tugged at my heart, Pip grabbed it on a much more visceral level: watching him endure the pangs of non-acceptance as he desperately tried to shed the shackles of his social class and become a gentleman, I wondered if a blue-collar kid like myself could ever enter the realm of the more urbane without being viewed as the kid "from the wrong side of the tracks." My dad used to tell me that I could do/be anything I wanted, if I had an education, and I couldn't help but wonder if the Academy was the ticket to a life different from the one I grew up in.

Then, there was Michael York, my first real movie crush. As a precocious pre-adolescent, I'd persuaded my mom to take me to see Franco Zeffirelli's cutting-edge version of "Romeo & Juliet" (still the best, by far, to me). At the time, "Tiger Beat" and "16" magazines were filled with stories about 17-year-old newcomer Leonard Whiting and 15-year-old Olivia Hussey as the star-crossed lovers, but I left the theater completely taken with one of their co-stars: Michael York (Tybalt).

York, as I later learned, was making his second film with Zeffirelli (the first was "The Taming of the Shrew" with then-combustible Hollywood lovers Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton), and was also a bit of a newcomer, though - unlike Whiting - was a graduate of University College @ Oxford and a classically trained actor. A decade older than Whiting at time R&J was filmed, York conveyed a still-youthful rogue-ishness in his portrayal of Juliet's cousin (and the play's chief antagonist) Tybalt. Tybalt is the lynch-pin that sets a series of unfortunate events in motion as the ill-fated teen lovers struggle to stay together, yet - despite the play's focus on the sensitive Romeo and beautiful Juliet, I couldn't take my eyes off York. He was visually, physically, emotionally stunning, and I wanted to know more about him.

Unfortunately, at 26, York was not the fodder teen magazines sought to cultivate, and it was difficult to follow his career, save through his movies. When I learned that he was to star in a movie version of my favorite novel, I couldn't wait for its premiere. Wanting to preserve every moment, I even found a way (in the pre-VHS era) to record the audio of the movie, and listened to it repeatedly afterward, hanging on every word, every sound effect my Panasonic cassette recorder had captured.

So, seeing "Great Expectations" on HBO's On Demand list a few days ago came as a welcome surprise...though I wondered how it would hold up 46 years later. I was not disappointed. As soon as Maurice Jarre's haunting score began, I knew I would have to see the movie to its end, hanging on every word, and remembering so much of the dialogue I thought I would have forgotten.

As a 1970's-era TV production, "Great Expectations" is pretty standard fare: the sets look like cheap, studio-created movie sets, and the passing of time only highlights the limitations trying to recreate the mysterious, eerie marshes of Dickensian England for television. Too, the production would have benefited from having two actors play both Pip and Estella. Michael York does not enter the film until Pip is an adult, while Sarah Miles carries Estella from teenager to middle-aged widow. That kind of incongruity hurts the arch of the storyline, and raises questions about production cost, director's vision, etc., not to mention the implicit sexism that Estella is a static character who never changes, while it is only Pip who undergoes a personal transformation.

Those issues aside - and they are not small imperfections - what remains, for me, is the most important part of this eminently watchable movie: the exquisite cast. Boasting Margaret Leighton as the iconic Miss Havisham, Anthony Quayle as (sometimes ethically dubious) attorney Mr. Jaggers, Joss Ackland as Joe Gargery and James Mason as Pip's benefactor (and convicted criminal) Able Magwitch, the film invites the viewer into the sometimes vicious world of social climbing as Pip tries determinedly to prove he is worthy of Estella's love.

I was particularly drawn to Leighton's Miss Havisham, whose heartbreak from being jilted at the altar years earlier has morphed into a sadistic kind of vengeance through her ward, Estella. But Leighton doesn't just show Miss H's pleasure seeking retribution by manipulating the lives of others; she evokes a kind of sadness, the broken-heart still too vulnerable to be shown to even her most devoted friends and family. Wearing the same white dress and veil from her wedding day, confined to a wheelchair, her face pasty white from years in self-imposed solitude, Leighton brings a quiet dignity to an otherwise caricatured spinster, too proud to reveal her private sorrow, too weak to stand in defense of being wronged by a heartless suitor. Leighton's face is a canvas Dickens would have appreciated in her ability to color all the nuances of her character.

Of special note is Anthony Quayle, whose pitch-perfect portrayal of solicitor Jaggers embodies the ever-changing ethical compass by which he navigates. When Pip first sees the monthly allowance he will be given to become a gentleman and protests that he couldn't possibly spend all that money, Jaggers reassures him that he will have to "find something." It is Jaggers who links the various characters - Pip, Miss Havisham, Estella and Magwitch - together. He is a minor, but pivotal character, and Quayle relishes every moment he is on screen, bringing the necessary ambiguity of Jaggers' purpose to each scene.

And then there is Michael York, whose delicate Victorian features epitomize what we have come to know as "Dickensian England." York's features - at once finely chiseled and evocatively pliable - make him perfectly cast as Pip (Ditto, I would argue, for his turn as fourth musketeer D'Artagnan in Richard Lester's glorious 1973 romp "The Three Musketeers"). His reluctant social-climbing gentleman underscores an orphaned youth saved only by his older sister and her blacksmith husband, Joe Gargery. When Joe comes to a bedridden Pip's rescue, we understand Pip's acknowledgement of his brother-in-law, "Ever the best of friends." It is Joe's good heart and unfaltering devotion that give Pip the strength and courage to admit the shortcomings of being a gentleman. Perhaps, being true to one's convictions - and one's heart - matters more, as Dickens would likely have agreed.

As some reading this post may know, Dickens wrote two endings for "Great Expectations," the result of protests from readers that the original epilogue was "too sad." I won't reveal which ending is used here, but suffice to say that it befits the rendering of the story to that point, leaving the viewer to determine the meaning of "no shadow of another parting" in this case.

I have probably seen every film Michael York has ever made. I've read his vivid, insightful, and entertaining memoirs (all three of them), and followed his recent battle with amyloidosis. In all of these, I feel fortunate to have maintained a kind of youthful admiration toward a much underrated actor and a literate artist, one who imbued in me (an impressionable girl from an old rust-belt city in the Midwest), a love of the classics and a delight in experiencing every possible dramatic iteration of those beloved stories on film. This one is worth the watching.