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When David Lean adapted Great Expectations in 1947, he "realized that to a certain extent we had a fantasy on our hands. The characters were larger and more highly colored than in life; and we deliberately kept them that way, because it was part of our intention to make a fairy tale."1 Lean subordinated plot to theme, and the camera became a means of subjective interpretation and introspection.
Credit for part of this shift in emphasis must go to Alec Guinness, whose stage play Great Expectations was acknowledged by theatrical producer John Moody as a probable influence on the film script.2 First performed in London (Rudolph Steiner Hall, Dec. 7, 1938) with Guinness and Martita Hunt, the production introduced the use of a reader, giving Guinness much more latitude and allowing Dickens' descriptions of the marshlands and of Pip's fear and terror to be vividly presented. As Pip steals food for Magwitch, the voices he seems to hear are projected over the action on stage:
THE READER: As soon as it was light enough to see I got up and crept downstairs. Every board upon the way. every crack in every board called to me. (VOICES whisper. "Stop thief! Get up. Mrs. Joe!" as PIP appears.) I stole some bread, some rind of cheese, some brandy from a stone bottle, and a beautifully round compact pork-pie.
(VOICES whisper)
VOICES (Whispering): Stop thief! Stop thief! You are on your way to the Hulks! What would Joe think! What would Mrs. Joe do to you!
THE READER: There was a door in the kitchen connecting with the forge. I took the file from among Joe's tools, closed the door again and ran for the misty marshes. And this was Christmas Day!
(PIP runs off and reappears immediately from a different direction, walking as if on difficult ground.)
VOICES: Stop him! Stop him! A boy with somebody else's pork-pie! Stop thief! A pork-pie, bread and brandy! Holloa, young thief! Thief! 3
In the Lean adaptation. Guinness and Martita Hunt were cast as Herbert Pocket and Miss Havisham, the same roles they had created on the stage. It is likely that the success of the stage adaptation with the use of a reader not only made Lean's subjective interpretation...