The Capitol Presents a Distinguished Screen Edition of "David Copperfield"

"I have in my heart of hearts," said Dickens, "a favorite child and his name is David Copperfield." The classic story of David's triumphs and sorrows, and of the amazing people who were his friends and enemies, has been made into a gorgeous photoplay which encompasses the rich and kindly humanity of the original so brilliantly that it becomes a screen masterpiece in its own right The immortal people of "David Copperfield," of whom G. K. Chesterton has said they are more actual than the man who made them, troop across the Capitol's screen like animated duplicates of the famous Phiz drawings, an irresistible and enormously heartwarming procession. It is my belief that this cinema edition of "David Copperfield" is the most profoundly satisfying screen manipulation of a great novel that the camera has ever given us.

Therein you will discover all the superb caricatures of blessed memory, led by a manly and heartbreaking David who is drawn to the life in the person of Master Freddie Bartholomew. Here are all the old scenes of David's adventures, Blunderstone and Yarmouth, Dover and Canterbury and London. Here are Peggotty, with no shape at all, and Aunt Betsey Trotwood, who expressed both her hatreds and her affections in the furioso manner, and poor Mr. Dick, who couldn't keep King Charles's head out of his writings, and bluff Dan Peggotty, who owned the heart of a child, and Barkis, who was willin', and Uriah Heep, who was 'umble, and deal Little Em'ly, and the terrible Mr. Murdstone, and all the rest.

Lord bless us, and Micawber, the unconquerable Micawber, who inhabited a world of creditors and squashy souls, but sent his spirit soaring among the stars. Being himself pretty generally a spiritual descendant of Mr. Micawber, W. C. Fields manages with the greatest of ease to become one with his illustrious predecessor according to the directions laid down in the text of Dickens and the drawing of Phiz. The Fields Micawber is, as it ought to be, the one performance that is able to remain predominant among such splendors of character acting as Lennox Pawle's Mr. Dick, Edna May Oliver's Aunt Betsey, Roland Young's Uriah Heep, Lionel Barrymore's Dan Peggotty and both Master Bartholomew of David the boy and Frank Lawton as David the man. Being himself touched by madness and genius, Mr. Fields is similarly the only player in a notable cast who has the audacity to contribute anything of himself to these incredibly real people of Dickens. But when you have heard him in his lofty rhetorical flights, heard him in the speech that begins: "You perceive before you the shattered fragments of a temple that was once called man"; heard him say: "With renewed courage I again throw down the gauntlet to society," you will perhaps understand that Mr. Fields can do no wrong.

Naturally, it is the magnificent Micawber, the indigent aristocrat, the tool of circumstance, who dominates that most splendid scene in which the sniveling Uriah is brought to account for his treacherous conduct toward Mr. Wickfield. Striking his regal pose, with the verminous Uriah quaking before him, and the victims of Uriah's cupidity at his back, he declaims that memorable declaration of independence which begins: "In denouncing the most consummate villain that has ever existed, I ask no consideration for myself. I have been myself enmeshed in this villain's machination. * * * I declare that Heep, and Heep only, of the firm of Wickfield & Heep, is the forger and the cheat!" Only a little below it in heroic stature place that other scene of liberation in which Aunt Betsey Trotwood tells the evil Murdstones exactly what she thinks of the way they behaved toward poor David.

Although it is a film of enormous length, according to screen standards—two hours and ten minutes—Hugh Walpole's screen play has been arranged with such uncanny correctness, and each of the myriad episodes which go into the making of the varied canvas has been performed so perfectly, that the photoplay slips by in an unwearying cavalcade. It is astonishing to discover how very much of the novel has found its way to the screen. Some of it has been telescoped for brevity, some of it has been omitted out of sheer painful necessity but the total impression is one of amazing completeness and accuracy. Pausing only once or twice for the briefest of subtitles, the work flows on its invincibly entertaining way from beginning to end.

Like Dickens himself, it is able to invest each character in this complex story with such a completeness of personality that none is too minor to take his place in the unforgettable gallery. Certainly it is in the great narrative tradition of the cinema. A new year which has already been enriched by several distinguished photoplays now adds a genuine masterpiece to its record with "David Copperfield."

—Andre Sennwald, New York Times, January 19, 1935

David Copperfield

Good intentions and imposing ambitions are plentiful enough in the making of movies, but woefully rare are the instances where technical excellence, good taste and judgment and an intelligent sense of the rightness of things combine to bring those intentions and ambitions to a successful issue. David Copperfield is one of those rare and happy successes. It meets every reasonable expectation competently and generously, and it will be universally praised, even by those who find it—as some people do find Dickens—oversentimental, overlong, and often more than a bit tedious. For it is excellent Dickens.

Dickens, with his vast humanity and that amazing vitality of his which created a whole world of characters, contains inexhaustible riches for the screen, though his long rambling plots are the despair of scenario writers. His people—types, caricatures, or whatever you choose to call them—are distinct and individual in appearance, actions and speech, rare parts for good actors. The trick in getting him effectively on the screen is the enormously difficult one of selecting and condensing—keeping enough to satisfy the Dickens lover who complains bitterly when any favorite character or episode is left out, and building what is selected into a structure that will have the continually mounting interest necessary to hold the attention in such a long film as any comprehensive screening of Dickens has to be.

David Copperfield, in this version, is amazingly faithful to its original, rich in atmosphere and fine characterizations, and keeping a remarkable amount of the Dickens plot. Whatever can be said for or against it can be said with just as much fairness about the novel from which it came. David's boyhood is colorful, moving and dramatic, coming to a fine and satisfying culmination with Aunt Betsey's rescuing him from all his troubles. After that the story rambles, without any central plot thread that seriously concerns the hero except the mild question of when he will finally get settled with the right girl. The episode of Little Em'ly and Steerforth (and what a maudlin episode Dickens made of it!) comes in too sketchily to get any kind of grip on the sympathies—and incidentally provides the poorest thing in the film from a production standpoint, a highly unconvincing shipwreck dripping with all the signs of having been made in the studio tank. The unmasking of Uriah Heap is really a side issue with David, considering his platonic indifference to Agnes, and we have had so little interest in the Wickfields aroused in us that we don't care vitally whether they were victimized or not. David's own career, which held us so strongly in his childhood, offers little more than a long wait for Dora to die and clear the way for Agnes, and the spectacle of a young man who doesn't know which girl he's in love with hasn't much serious dramatic fascination.

But the question of whether the plot is a strong dramatic one matters very little compared with the wealth of characters in the film who come breathing and full-blooded straight out of Dickens' pages. there's David himself, ideally played by both Freddie Bartholomew and Frank Lawton, who seem miraculously like the same person at different ages. If Frank Lawton appears less interesting, it's because his adventures are so mild compared with those of Freddie Bartholomew. W. C. Fields' whole career seems to have been a special training for this picture, and he steps forth finally as the complete incarnation of Micawber. Jean Cadell makes it a grievance that there is so little of her Mrs. Micawber. Edna May Oliver and Jessie Ralph give flawless pictures of Betsey Trotwood and Peggotty. The black villainy of the Murdstones is done in just the right spirit by Basil Rathbone and Violet Kemble Cooper, and Roland Young makes you actually feel the dampness of Uriah Heap's hands. There's a perfect little sketch of that tame lunatic of Aunt Betsey's , Mr. Dick, and there are delightful glimpses of Barkis, Mrs. Gummidge, and Clickett. The young girls are as dull as the usual heroine of Dickens, though far more robust than any Dickens seems to have imagined. It is hard to accept such healthy looking young women as Elizabeth Allan and Maureen O'Sullivan pining away in the vapoursy fashion of Victorian fiction.

The film is a splendid picture-book of the novel, made for Dickens lovers. If any of that vast army have fault to find with it they are not only unreasonable, but quite ignorant of the vast difficulties that were conquered in doing so good a job. 

Picture rated Honorable Mention.

—J. S. H., National Board of Review, February 1935

"David Copperfield" with a star cast

Excellent! One does not have to be a lover of Dickens' works to enjoy "David Copperfield"; it is a picture that will undoubtedly entertain everybody. Its only defect is its excessive length, but even this is a minor defect since the interest is held almost throughout. But the first half is more enjoyable than the second; this is owed mainly to the marvelous acting of Freddie Bartholomew, a young English boy, who portrays "David" in his youth. Freddie is handsome, sensitive, capable, and charming; and his diction is perfect. In many of the situations he is so pathetic that one will not be able to suppress the tears. One of such situations is where his mother dies and he is left with his stern stepfather: The boy's anguish is heartbreaking. But not only is he superb; he is also impressive whenever he appears. He carries the burden of the first half of the picture appearing almost throughout. (In the second half, he is grown up and Laughton takes his part.) The let-down in the second half is caused by the fact that one misses Freddie. Another reason is that there is not as much human interest, and the story becomes quite involved, centering not only around Copperfield's life but around that of many other persons in whom one is not interested so much.

Each one of the performers seems to have been born for the part he or she takes. Edna May Oliver is perfect as David's aunt; she is a fussy old woman, insisting on having her own way; but she becomes endeared to the spectator because of her kind treatment of David. W.C. Fields provokes hearty laughter as Micawber, David's pedantic friend; he never works, waiting for the day when something will come his way that would befit his intelligence. He is hounded by creditors, up to the time he, in his later years, becomes an assistant to a lawyer:

David Copperfield, after his mother's death, is forced by his stepfather to accept employment in London in a wine shop and to board with the Micawber family. Since David works, and hard, he misses his schooling. the only thing that keeps him going is the kind treatment he receives from Micawber. When Micawber is forced to move because of his debts, David runs away to his aunt and pleads with her to keep him. She keeps him and gives him love and care. She sends him to a professor to be educated. David grows up with his teacher's daughter. He makes a good record in school and eventually marries Dora, an impractical but charming girl. When his wife dies, David marries the professor's daughter, who always loved him.

Hugh Walpole and Howard Estabrook adapted the screen play from Charles Dickens novel. George Cukor did excellent work as the director. David O. Selznick is the producer. Some of the others in the cast are Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Basil Rathbone, Roland Young, Hugh Williams, Jessie Ralph, Una O'Connor, Violet Kemble Cooper and Herbert Mundin.

Excellent for children, adolescents, and Sundays. Suitability, Class A.

—Harrison's Reports, January 26, 1935