Following the success of Great Expectations, Ealing jumped on the bandwagon with this. Dickens is such a great storyteller that unless you're stupid, you'll have an exciting and dramatic story on your hands - screenwriter John Dighton doesn't let the side down. This merry tale is full of hardship and bastards, so that when our heroes prevail, it's all the more satisfying.
Cedric Hardwicke is good as the monstrous Uncle Nickleby and Bernard Miles has a particularly relishable role as his drunken secretary who loathes him. With Derek Bond, Sally Anne Howes and Mary Merrall as the other Nicklebys, Alfred Drayton, Sybil Thorndyke and Vida Hope as the odious Squeers, Aubrey Woods the unfortunate Smike, plus Cathleen Nesbitt, Stanley Holloway, two James Hayters, an uncredited Hattie Jacques and an even more uncredited Jean Marsh (as 'sewing girl')!
The print we saw was dark and shaky and did not reflect Gordon Dines' usually good lighting. The editing, particularly in the striking storm scene at the end, is notable and by Leslie Norman. Lord Berners music is bombastic and Michael Relph is the art director.
I guess it was because Dickens' stories were published as serials that you get the page turning quality, like you get with Hergé and Will Eisner's Spirit.
George Perry found fault with it as usual (in 'Forever Ealing') that it condensed the story into 'a string of cameos' but I thought it worked rather well.
Cavalcanti left Ealing after this, thinking he could make more money as a freelancer. His next film was the excellent They Made Me a Fugitive but after that his films seemed - in various countries - to be unnotable.
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