Thursday, January 8, 2015

David Copperfield (1935)



Academy Awards, USA 1936

Nominated
Oscar
Best Picture
Best Film Editing
Robert Kern
Best Assistant Director
Joseph M. Newman

MGM
Directed by George Cukor
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)

The story of young Copperfield, his childhood tribulations with no father, a cold stepfather and then no mother, only to find a new home with a friendly aunt in the country. During his college years he falls in love and marries a childlike woman ill suited for him, not realizing his true life has been right next to him all of the time. Luckily fate intervenes and they end up together anyway. It's hard to criticize a story by Charles Dickens, but it is episodic and even a bit predictable. The young David is precocious and often irritating, and the teenage David naive. However, the supporting characters more than make up for any of his shortcomings, with W.C. Fields, Basil Rathbone, Lionel Barrymore and especially Roland Young as Uriah Heep all giving vivid portrayals. 

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