Despite being an English teacher and a heavy reader, I can’t say that I have read a lot of Charles Dickens’s work. In point of fact, I wasn’t even sure if I had read David Copperfield before I started the movie. However, I quickly realized I was getting David Copperfield, which I haven’t read, mixed up with Great Expectations, which I have. That said, Dickens’s work does have a reputation, so can I truly claim to not know roughly how a story like David Copperfield would go even if I haven’t read it?
And then I saw the 1935 movie version featured comedian W.C. Fields, and though I can’t claim to have ever seen any of his work before aside from bits and pieces here and there, that seemed like a good enough reason to see the movie, especially since it was actually nominated for Best Picture once upon a time. True, it lost to Mutiny on the Bounty, but it was at least respected enough when it was new to get a nomination.
David Copperfield, in many ways, is the prototypical Dickens story. Born to a young widowed mother, David goes through life much like the philosopher Boethius’s concept of the Wheel of Fortune: his life goes through periods where things go his way and then periods where things go decidedly against him. He’s orphaned, forced to work in his cruel stepfather’s factory, finds eccentric friends and relatives who care for him very much, but misfortune is never very far away. Everyone he meets is either an odd saint of a human being who will show David nothing but kindness or a cruel, insensitive type who will treat the lad poorly.
If anything, there arguably isn’t an overall plot to David Copperfield as the story just goes from one incident to another. The only real idea at the center is David, whether he’s a boy played by child star Freddie Bartholomew or as an adult by Frank Lawton, is a kind, sweet-natured person who doesn’t deserve what bad things happen to him. Whether or not he deserves the good fortune he also gets may be a bit debatable. Good people he meets just feel the need to adore him, and if anything, he’s a bit too trusting of others he encounters in life.
Besides, this is Dickens. He doesn’t give his villains the subtlest of names when we get figures with named like Murdstone and Uriah Heap. Then again, most of the characters in this story seem to have faintly ridiculous names. Those people’s names just seem more sinister.
This movie was something of a passion project for producer David O. Selznick as his own father learned English by reading David Copperfield. It shows. The cast is huge, and while I didn’t know every actor in it, I did think many of the names seemed familiar to me one way or the other. The most obvious is Fields as David’s friend Mr. Micawber. Fields apparently couldn’t master his lines and an English accent, but he was a fan of Dickens’s work himself, so he seems to have mostly behaved himself. If Wikipedia is to be believed, this was the only movie Fields ever made where he didn’t ad lib some of his lines, and though his character is not played for laughs, he does get some moments of physical comedy in, particularly a moment when Micawber tries to sneak into a window on his roof to avoid creditors or just general bits that involved the man’s hat. Those bits, allowed in because they were true to the character, were rather amusing. I may have to find some of Fields’s other work. He may have been the biggest star in the movie if the poster is anything to go by, and he isn’t even in the movie all that much. Then again, that could be true of anyone who isn’t David Copperfield.
Maybe I should read that book someday while I am at it.
Grade: A-
0 Comments