Oliver! (1968) ⭐ 7.4 | Drama, Family, Musical (original) (raw)
2h 33m
After being sold to the mortician Sowerberry, young orphan Oliver Twist runs away and meets a group of boys trained to be pickpockets by their elderly mentor Fagin in 1830s London in this mu... Read allAfter being sold to the mortician Sowerberry, young orphan Oliver Twist runs away and meets a group of boys trained to be pickpockets by their elderly mentor Fagin in 1830s London in this musical based on Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.After being sold to the mortician Sowerberry, young orphan Oliver Twist runs away and meets a group of boys trained to be pickpockets by their elderly mentor Fagin in 1830s London in this musical based on Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.
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Best Picture Winners by Year
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A pretty good musical that stands up fifty years later...
... and perhaps that is because it is not set in the 60s. Many sixties films have aged badly, worse than some films made decades before. And this Best Picture winner along with the ones before and after just show the transition going on in film and culture. The year before it was a film about racism with "In The Heat of the Night", then this musical adaptation of a Dickens novel, then in 1969 it was "Midnight Cowboy", a story of a friendship between a male prostitute and a conman.
Getting back to Oliver!, it would have been nice if they had hired a male lead who was masculine or likable or able to carry a tune in any way whatsoever, but this film has so many other pluses and the kid takes a backseat for so much of the film that i look beyond that.
I wonder what happened to the girl who played Nancy in this? She is absolutely wonderful and I don't think she had much of a film career afterwards. She would have made a much better supporting actress nominee than at least one person I can think of who did make the cut that year.
In the end though, I actually have to say that my favorite thing about it is Oliver Reed. It's funny because I read that he was the nephew of the director, and as such the director was incredibly resistant to cast him and was accused of nepotism. Surely all of this kvetching and whispering was shut down the minute everyone saw the film. Everytime I see him in something, I'm blown away by what a very fine actor he was and what amazing physicality he had.
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By what name was Oliver! (1968) officially released in India in English?