Great Expectations (1974 film)

This article is about the 1974 film. For other uses, see Great Expectations (disambiguation).

Great Expectations is a 1974 film made for television based on the Charles Dickens 1861 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 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 by Freddie Young. It was filmed in Eastmancolor and it was entered into the 9th Moscow International Film Festival in 1975.^[3]

Great Expectations
Directed by	Joseph Hardy
Screenplay by	Sherman Yellen
Based on	Great Expectations 1861 novel by Charles Dickens
Produced by	Robert Fryer
Starring	Michael York Sarah Miles James Mason Robert Morley Margaret Leighton Anthony Quayle Rachel Roberts Joss Ackland
Cinematography	Freddie Young
Music by	Maurice Jarre
Production companies	Transcontinental Film Productions,[1] ITC[2]
Release date	November 22, 1974 (1974-11-22)
Running time	124 minutes
Countries	United States United Kingdom
Languages	English and Germanic

Plot summary

The movie follows the journey of Pip, an orphaned boy raised by his harsh sister and her kind-hearted husband, Joe Gargery, a blacksmith. The story begins in the desolate marshes of Kent, where young Pip encounters an escaped convict, Abel Magwitch. Despite his fear, Pip aids the convict by bringing him food and a file to remove his shackles. This act of kindness sets the stage for the dramatic twists in Pip's life.

Pip’s fortunes change when he is invited to the decaying mansion of the wealthy and eccentric Miss Havisham. There, he meets Estella, Miss Havisham’s beautiful but cold-hearted ward. Pip becomes infatuated with Estella, despite her aloofness and the manipulative intentions of Miss Havisham, who seeks to use Estella to exact revenge on men for her own heartbreak.

Years later, Pip learns that he has come into a great fortune from an anonymous benefactor. Believing this benefactor to be Miss Havisham, Pip moves to London to become a gentleman, hoping to win Estella’s love. Under the guidance of the shrewd lawyer Jaggers and his clerk Wemmick, Pip navigates the complexities of high society. He befriends Herbert Pocket, who becomes a loyal companion, and begins to distance himself from his humble origins and the people who cared for him, including Joe.

The story takes a dramatic turn when Pip discovers that his benefactor is not Miss Havisham but Abel Magwitch, the convict he helped as a child. Magwitch, having amassed wealth in Australia, has risked his life to return to England to see Pip. This revelation forces Pip to confront his own values and the true meaning of loyalty and gratitude.

As Pip’s world unravels, he learns of Estella’s tragic upbringing and her eventual marriage to the cruel Bentley Drummle. Miss Havisham, consumed by guilt for her role in shaping Estella’s coldness and Pip’s heartbreak, seeks forgiveness but tragically dies in a fire at her mansion. Pip, meanwhile, attempts to help Magwitch escape England, but their plan fails. Magwitch is captured and dies in prison, but not before Pip assures him that his daughter, whom Magwitch thought lost, is alive and well—revealed to be Estella.

In the end, a humbler and wiser Pip returns to his roots. The film concludes with a poignant reunion between Pip and Estella, leaving their future open to interpretation.

Cast

• Michael York as Pip
• Sarah Miles as Estella
• James Mason as Abel Magwitch
• Margaret Leighton as Miss Havisham
• Robert Morley as Uncle Pumblechook
• Anthony Quayle as Jaggers
• Joss Ackland as Joe Gargery
• Rachel Roberts as Mrs. Gargery
• Andrew Ray as Herbert Pocket
• Heather Sears as Biddy
• Simon Gipps-Kent as Young Pip
• James Faulkner as Bentley Drummle
• Peter Bull as Wemmick
• John Clive as Mr. Wopsle
• Patsy Smart as Mrs. Wopsle
• Maria Charles as Sarah Pocket

Production and reception

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".^[4] 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".^[5]

Critics' comments were 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".^[6] 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".^[7]

Brian McFarlane, writing in a 2008 study of screen adaptations of Great Expectations, criticised the film for its tendency to give way to "clichés of sentimentality" and assured the director, who had expressed a hope that people would not feel the necessity of comparing it with David Lean's version that, "he need not have worried: no one would have spoken of them in the same breath. It's not just Lean's film with which it would not stand comparison but with several superior TV mini-series too". McFarlane expressed some admiration however for Margaret Leighton's interpretation of the jilted Miss Havisham: "there is a potent sense of the perverse pleasure she takes in watching Estella humiliate Pip, and, during a later visit, of real cruelty in her telling him, 'You've lost her'. Leighton injected 'a necessary bitterness into these scenes'".^[8] The critic David Parker, writing for the BFI Screenonline website, praised Joss Ackland's interpretation of Joe Gargery: "Ackland manages to create a subtle blend of individual simplicity and moral fortitude that seems to capture the essential role the village blacksmith fills in the narrative."^[9]