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This episode of the popular Wonderful London series aims to show the viewer
authentic sites in the city associated with Dickens the man and the London
backgrounds for his fictional creations.
The film, despite being rapidly and cheaply produced, is interesting for
several reasons. It shows locations associated with Dickens that have changed
(or not) since it was filmed in 1924, and it uses superimposed 'ghostly'
Dickensian characters in a way that is unusual in a production of this type.
Perhaps best of all for film historians and Dickens fans alike, it
incorporates footage from an otherwise lost Dickens adaptation - the 1911 Thomas
Bentley/Hepworth production of Oliver Twist. One very short scene shows Bill
Sikes escaping over the roof from the house in Jacob's Island, while there is
also a tiny fragment of the death of Nancy scene.
Both these clips were used to supplement the lack of anything to see 'on the
ground' in that riverside area, which had presumably been extensively rebuilt
since Dickens' day. Several sites in the film look much as they do today - the
Old Curiosity Shop is almost identical and even then bore the legend
'immortalised by Charles Dickens' that proclaimed it the authentic site from the
novel. The characters of Little Nell and Grandfather are seen emerging from the
shop, followed by Dickens himself.
The actors have been superimposed with a good deal of skill. It is a clever
way to help the viewer to visualise the characters in their 'real' location. The
Law Courts - settings for Bleak House and The Pickwick Papers - have barely changed,
but other locations have changed utterly: the site of the famous blacking
factory where the young Dickens was put to work is completely overlain by the
railway coming over Hungerford Bridge to Charing Cross.
The film's intertitles urge the viewer to get out and see these locations
before they all disappear, illustrating this plea with a shot of a building
being demolished to one side of St Mary le Strand (where Dickens' parents were
married). A final sequence in the film sees the various Dickens characters
(Quilp, Little Nell, Sam Weller, Fagin and the Artful Dodger, with Mr Pickwick
driving) going for a ride on a motorised double decker bus.
Bryony Dixon
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Complete film (12:01)
