Great Expectations (1974 film)
| Great Expectations | |
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| Directed by | Joseph Hardy |
| Written by |
Charles Dickens (novel) Sherman Yellen (screenplay) |
| Starring |
Michael York Sarah Miles |
| Music by | Maurice Jarre |
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Release date
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Running time
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124 minutes |
| Country | United States United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Great Expectations is a 1974 film made for television based on the Charles Dickens novel of the same name. It was directed by Joseph Hardy, with screenwriter Sherman Yellen and music by Maurice Jarre, starring Michael York as Pip, Simon Gipps-Kent as Young Pip and Sarah Miles as Estella. The production, for Transcontinental Films and Lew Grade's ITC, was made for US television and released to cinemas in the UK. It broke with tradition by having the same actress (the thirty-three-year-old Sarah Miles) play both the younger and older Estella. The film was shot in Panavision by Freddie Young. It was filmed in Eastmancolor and it was entered into the 9th Moscow International Film Festival in 1975.
The film was originally intended to be a musical, perhaps inspired by the commercial and critical success of Carol Reed's Oscar-winning Oliver! CinemaTV Today reported in 1974 however that 'in an unprecedented move, the bulk of the score for Sir Lew Grade and NBC's musical version of Great Expectations has been scrapped seven weeks into shooting'.Films Illustrated reported that the film would contain 'only a traditional score by Maurice Jarre' after the idea of a film musical version had been dropped. In 1995 Michael York said 'we found when we started putting it together [that] the songs interrupted the narrative flow of the piece'.
Criticism was generally negative. The Listener - 'Everything is wrong about it with a sort of dedicated, inspired wrongness that, in itself, is breath-taking'. The Monthly Film Bulletin thought director Hardy and screenwriter Yellen had reduced 'one of Dickens' most subtle and complex novels to an insipid seasonal confection'. Gordon Gow, writing in Films and Filming thought it odd to have 'Pip divided between two players, [while] his beloved Estella should be played by one actress the whole way through'.
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