Sir Carol Reed has delivered a belter of a film that I'm certain would have Charles Dickens dancing with delight. Mark Lester is ideally cast as the weedy title character; brought up in the harshness of a Victorian workhouse. After daring to ask for "more" at supper time, he is sold to the local undertaker; runs away to London and the rest is the stuff of well known literature. Ron Moody is outstanding as "Fagin", with Shani Wallis "Nancy"; Oliver Reed as the dastardly "Bill Sikes" and Jack Wild as the "Artful Dodger" all making the best of Lionel Bart's cracking musical adaptation of this tale of 19th century London squalor and violence. I did a version of this on stage in Glasgow when I was but a child, and when I see it again now I remember almost all of the words (that, and the looks I got going home on the bus with my stage make up still on!).
