esrosedotblog

SOAP OPERA

I am about as illiterate with Dickens as I am with Shakespeare; with an equivalent sub-zero desire to delve into it.

I can happily go to my grave without scaling the craggy peaks of high literature.

I suppose that Dickens is not as high as the bard but it falls into the same category of tiresome stories elongated into endless prose when a few words would do.

Dickens was a serial writer and his work extended to get the penny a page payment I hear.

So I just bypassed it. I tried but would zee out early on.

I know all about A Christmas Carol and that is quite enough.

When I was a kid I may have seen the film of A Tale of Two Cities. A lot of head chopping, that. I think I saw it in school assembly. Mandatory.

So, it is not difficult to keep my rule: I don't see what I have already read and I don't read what I have already seen (and no sequels either)

Good thing as today's Best 1176 NYTimes Film was David Lean's

Great Expectations (1946)

I liked it very much. It is a film-film. No pretense is made for realism. It is done much as a dream in many of its parts; sometimes nightmarish and, other times, quite happy.

I imagine that there is much more to the literary soap operatic version. I will not have to read the book as I have seen the film. Not that I would have anyway it being Dickens.

There are some great English actors in this who I used to see frequently when we had the British cinema as a part of our daily lives. They are welcome old friends.

I will give this a 4 out of Netflix5.