ianlouisiana Review of The Pickwick Papers

The Pickwick Papers (1952)

Being the despatches from the travels of the Pickwick Club.

[10/10 · 6 September 2006]

Travellers'Tales can make fascinating reading.Titles like "My journeys through the veldt" and "In search of the tiger" enthralled Victorians in their safe,comfortable parlours.Mr Charles Dickens,however,chose England with its wayside inns,gentle rivers and village churches as a setting for his picaresque masterpiece "The Pickwick Papers". His travellers encountered not ferocious beasts or exotic natives but an extraordinary gallery of ordinary and immediately recognisable English people. Mr Dickens loved humankind but he was not sentimental about it. He created some of the most memorable villains in literature as well as its most enduring heroes. His better - known novels have been turned into films with varying degrees of success - "The Pickwick Papers" of 1952 being one of the most pleasing. With Mr James Hayter triumphant as a compassionate and jolly Pickwick -from a time when being fat was not a federal offence -the film presents Mr Dickens' vision of Victorian England from elegaic to tragic. All your favourite stalwarts from 1950s British Cinema fill the supporting cast.I would make special mention of Mr Nigel Patrick as Jingle,a performance he never bettered in a long successful career. With "Great Expectations" and "Oliver Twist","The Pickwick Papers" completes a trilogy of early post-war movies based on Mr Dickens' works,each of which was made with respect for the original material, creativity,vision and exuberance,the transition from one art form to another superbly accomplished.