Oliver!
This review is a part of the Best Picture Project: a review of every single Academy Award winner for the Best Picture category. Oliver! is the forty first Best Picture winner at the 1968 Academy Awards.
A year after In the Heat of the Night changed the course of the Academy Awards for good, the Academy reverted backwards for a minute. Oliver! was crowned Best Picture, just so one last musical could be squeezed into the pantheon of the award (Chicago was been the only musical to win Best Picture since). Oliver! is obviously a retelling of Oliver Twist. It's as smarmy and pipsqueak-y as a film can be. I love the tale of Oliver Twist and have even seen a modern-enough stage adaptation of it. This film is marvellous as a production portfolio, but I feel it relies far too heavily on its on-set creations to care about the actual story.
Carol Reed directed The Third Man, for crying out loud. Maybe his Best Director and Picture wins for Oliver! were meant as legacy awards for his previous genius. Oliver! contains barely any restraint compared to the previous noir classic. I mean, look at the title. It's literally Oliver!. The title is shouting the film at you. That's exactly what the feature does for its entire two and a half hours. Every. single. minute. When Oliver Twist asks for more food in the workhouse, we understand the emptiness he and the other boys feel. How is it a film based on the voids in the lives of the abandoned feels so obnoxiously stuffed?
Although there are good performances, a lot of the commitment gets lost amongst the film’s self-indulgence.
You like some of the iconic songs? Well, Oliver! likes to let them run on for too damn long. You appreciate colour? Well, Oliver! sometimes has too much going on visually to the point of becoming an eyesore. Do you like the story of Oliver Twist finding solace and problems amongst different types of families? Well, be prepared to spend a little too much time with all of these characters. The only time Oliver! holds itself back is when it ends. We wait this entire time for Oliver Twist's happy outcome, and we end literally as soon as it begins. I don't care if that's how some versions of the play go. If this is a film that is willing to dwell on many things for too long, that should have been the one moment that we spend a bit of time with. It's almost like a slap in the face, outside of the fact that Reed and company manage to freeze on a wholesome image that is impossible to be mad at.
Again, the creation of Oliver! is a spectacle to behold, so on that front, the film is great. With all things considered, Oliver! feels like the times you had one too many chocolates and feel sick (except you had twelve too many). It is an overload of musical goodness, and less of a care on the pacing and structure of the story. If you love Oliver Twist enough to bypass how overindulgent a tribute can be, then this will feel like you've had the soundtrack on for three times in a row (if that is your fancy). If not, then you may be as let down and bothered as I am, with how such a beloved tale can feel too inspired and uninspired at exactly the same time. Flashiness does not fill up emptiness. Love does.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.