ABSTRACT
Rather than discuss Leans complicity with Victorian anti-Semitic prejudices, more relevant to my analysis is the treatment of Fagin in the film. Leans Twist espouses the stark moral vision of the source text, which depicts a world of hardened hypocrites, thieves and murderers at all levels of society and adds some original visual touches to it: the melodramatic effects of black and white, an increased sense of displacement in the labyrinthine city, and expressionist camera techniques (Pulver). As for the casting, the haggard starved faces of the workhouse women and orphans (some of them with shaven heads, evocative of inmates in war and concentration camps), Fagins boys and the common people in the London crowd are unforgettable.
