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Great Expectations Essay The audience have witnessed the pursuit, and had a brief glance at the face of the convict they have seen the airborne geese above the marshes, and they want to know what will happen When examining the film, one has to regard the social context in which the film was made. Leans version was created the year after the Second World War. People would probably need their morale boosted after the six years of conflict, and the film was probably intended to make people feel happier. In the closing stages of the Lean film, Pip meets Estella in Miss Havershams house. He pulls down the curtain, lighting the room, and shouts at Estella look around you death and decay you do not belong here you must get away from this place come with me into the sunlight. I believe that this is a metaphor; death and decay is the war and Estella represents the people of Britain. They can come out into the sunlight, and leave the war behind them. Lean is reminding the audience that they can forget the war, and go on to lead new lives. Lean also attempts to put across a moral message. When Pip is a child his conscience speaks to him and the audience. As he makes his way downstairs to steal the food there is a voice whispering, wake up Mrs. Joe, wake up Mrs. Joe, wake up Mrs. Joe. This effect does appear in the original text, every crack in every board calling after me stop thief! and Get up Mrs Joe. A similar device is that of the talking cows. Lean uses this, but again, Marchant decides not to, preferring a more realistic approach. The cows provide an element of humour in the film, but I feel that in the book they were included mainly to give the audience a glimpse of Pips conscience and not to provide comedy. This also gives the film a touch of originality. Before the 1940s a large amount of film sound was simple and ill-conceived the audience saw a car, therefore the audience should hear a car. Consequently, when the audience saw a cow, they were probably expecting to hear cow, not a human voice. Now, however, in an age when talking animals appear in most childrens television programs, the modern audiences are not likely to be surprised by the effect. Another aspect to take in consideration is the media for which the productions were originally created. The BBC version was written for the television, bringing the characters into the home. I assume that Leans film was originally created for the cinema. Lean shows this in many ways. The modern audience can recognize that aspects such as the silhouetted gibbets would have a greater impact when shown on the large screen. Both films are set many decades before the dates they were made, and neither audience had experiences of the period in which the story was set. Marchants version is an attempt at an accurate historical representation of the Victorian age. I feel that Lean decided to concentrate more on storyline, and the following of Dickens text rather than being fixated in creating an accurate historical representation of Victorian Britain. Dickens had written from his own first hand experience of the era, so he knew what had happened. The descriptions of the characters in the text are very precise, and Lean has concentrated on creating the individuals that Dickens described. This is probably what the audience would expect. The post-war audience would want to look back on the age of empire in the way that Dickens did, but in the 1990s, a new approach is expected by the increasingly changing audience. Dickens is generally considered as boring and tedious, and the Marchant film attempts to give a fresh, 20th century makeover to one of Britains most celebrated authors. To conclude, I feel that, considering the circumstances in which it was made, Leans film was the more successful of the two. In post war Britain there was not a huge amount of money for making films, and there was limited technology available for the production. Materials were expensive and scarce, and could not be easily obtained. The film manages to make the opening sequence terrifying, exciting and tense, without using excessive violence or disturbing images. It manages to portray the novel in a realistic way, and his storyline is truer to the original than the BBC version. Sonya Shah Page 1 of 4 Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Great Expectations section.