Great Expectations (1946 film)
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Great Expectations is a 1946 British film directed by David Lean and based on the novel by Charles Dickens. It stars John Mills as Pip, Valerie Hobson as Estella, Finlay Currie as Abel Magwitch, Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham, Alec Guinness as Herbert Pocket, Francis L. Sullivan as Jaggers, Bernard Miles as Joe Gargery and Anthony Wager and Jean Simmons as the young Pip and Estella respectively.
It was the first of two films Lean directed based on Dickens, the other being the 1948 adaptation of Oliver Twist. The first third of the film in particular is very atmospheric, almost horror-like -- as critic Jonathan Rigby observed in English Gothic -- with its graveyards, creaking branches, eerie shadows and cobweb-filled "haunted houses".
The script was produced by Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean, Cecil McGivern, Ronald Neame and Kay Walsh, and the film was produced by Ronald Neame and photographed by Guy Green.
It won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White, and was nominated for Best Director, Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay.
In 1999 it came 5th in a BFI poll of British films, while in 2004 Total Film named it 14th greatest British film of all time.
The design of Mrs. Havisham's castle influenced and is acknowledged in another classic film, Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd.
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