Great Expectations

Well, everyone quite rightly has said this is an homage to Sunset Boulevard, the Norma Desmond character played by Gloria Swanson.

But the film and literary character that I also see deeply embedded in the very scary Billy Presley in that kind of house in the middle of nowhere is Miss Havisham from Great Expectations.

And this terrified me when I saw it on television.

This is the David Lean 1946 version, and she's played by Martita Hunt.

But anyway, it's a really scary place with a really scary character and a really vulnerable kind of young male.

That's what I've picked.

And interestingly, to put those things together, I'm pretty sure Gillian Anderson played Miss Havisham in An Adaptation of Great Expectations.

Did she? I believe so.

Early in his career, though, he wasn't making epics at all.

He directed Brief Encounter, followed by acclaimed adaptations of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist.

Then came this movie, The Bridge on the River Kwai, which completely changed the scale of his career.

Kwai won him his first Best Director Oscar.

His career was very connected to the director of this movie, David Lean.

They made six films together over four decades.

Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India.

Lean called Guinness his good luck charm, although their relationship eventually became very prickly.

Very Robert Eggers.

I, I mean, even, like, um, one of the films that I feel is quite Gothic, um, that doesn't really get talked about being Gothic is, um, I really love David Lean's Great Expectations, especially with how, you know, Miss Havisham and also the streetlight- all the, the environments are so stylized when you actually look back at those films.

Um, and just, you know, interesting, uh, you know, even with the lighting as well.

So it made me think about how, um, you know, how to make this atmosphere kind of feel like- translate with the comic that I wanted to kind of, you know, do.

that I could have had could have had less monkeys or something less monkeys yeah

oh yes Leonard Austin so he's the Shadrach and then Finlay Currie is councillor Duxbury he goes councillor Duxbury for sure councillor and obviously he was in great expectations and as a kid he emigrated so

he was like he's got like a Scottish accent he

was born in Edinburgh and he emigrated I think he did a stage show or he was like a variety and he left to go to America and then that's why he's in a lot of American films but then he goes back and forth and also that's why sometimes you hear him he's a lot of these biblical epics but obviously he was most famous as Magwitch in Great Expectations you know when he says give me the pie

You know, when he's in the graveyard.

And he's getting that, you know.

It may be a nomination if you nominate 10, but I don't think it's one of the five best movies of the year, 1947.

Great Expectations is a movie that I think definitely deserved a nomination.

Of course, it's the adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic, A Great Expectation, of course, is all about the young boy, Pip.

who is basically born a peasant, as he would be called, but wants to become a gentleman, as they say.

It's directed by one of the great directors, David Lean.

And he, of course, has done several masterpieces.

And I think great expectations.

While not being his best film, I think that it was worthy of a nomination for the year.

In 1971, he received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Ryan's Daughter, a role in which he did not speak a single word.

Mills had great success as Pip in Great Expectations, directed by David Lean.

See, this is just like classic British cinema.

Yeah, yeah,