Great Expectations vs. David Copperfield

nclysander

on 2/19/2012

Charles Dickens for television, 3 decades apart. The 1969 David Copperfield is pretty wrongheaded at times -- the frame story is given way too much screen time, and the famous childhood scenes are skipped over -- but at least it has a star-studded cast and some patches of effective humor (a must for a Dickens adaptation). Great Expectations is perhaps more cogent as a standalone piece of film-making, but it is terribly dour and wastes its miniseries-length running time. David Copperfield it is.