Little Dorrit Reviews

Little Dorrit is one of Charles Dickens's greatest and least-read novels, and this massive, six-hour version by director-screenwriter Christine Edzard, essentially faithful to the work, is one of the finest of all Dickens screen adaptations. The film plays in two three-hour parts. Part I, "Nobody's Fault" (Dickens' original title), is told from the point of view of Jacobi, a middle-aged bachelor returning home to London after 20 years in China. Jacobi becomes interested in the case of Guinness, a man who has been locked in a debtors' prison for the last 25 years, and in his daughter, Pickering, a seamstress who works for Jacobi's forbidding mother. Impressed by their sad story, Jacobi sets out to help the man and his daughter to reclaim a fortune. Part II, "Little Dorrit's Story," told from the seamstress's point of view, begins with her birth in prison and follows her as she assumes the role of mother to her selfish family. When Jacobi arrives in England, she falls in love with him, though she knows he loves another. LITTLE DORRIT is one film in two feature-length parts. Part II is necessarily the stronger, developing themes and filling out the plot, but the two halves are interdependent. In Edzard's version, Dickens' Little Dorrit character takes on a much more forceful consciousness; she becomes, in a sense, the Dickensian conscience provided by the novel's third-person narration. Boasting a 211-member cast, LITTLE DORRIT is packed with fine performances--and best of all is veteran Dickensian Alec Guinness (GREAT EXPECTATIONS, OLIVER TWIST, SCROOGE).