If Dickens has any claim to have "written the whole of humanity", it's in books like David Copperfield we might find the proof. It's not his only "orphan grows up" novel, but it was apparently his favorite. Watching George Cukor's 1935 adaptation, we find several types of person delivered to us beautifully by great actors: Basil Rathbone as the harsh, unloving stepfather; W.C. Fields as the verbose and proud spendthrift; Roland Young as Uriah Heep, the slimiest of the literary slimes... Always happy to see Edna May Oliver, here tempering a cantankerousness with love for her young charge; and as ever, not so happy to see the queen of over-actors, Una O'Connor, though thankfully in a small role. The younger actors are kind of a wash, however. Young David is whiny and all the twentysomethings are breathless. There's always a sense with these kinds of books that movies can't do them justice, reducing them to incidents we have to jump to with as little connecting tissue as possible. And so we have the big special effects sequence of the tempest feeling like it's catering to a most adjacent subplot. But overall, this story of a boy whose success comes from being a good person with a sharp sensitivity to injustice, is well-juggled period melodrama. Now will someone tell me how much Christmas there is in the book, cuz the movie starts with Christmas music, but doesn't seem to really FEATURE Christmas at any point. Or is Dickens just synonymous with the Holidays thanks to a certain Carol?

really enjoyed this one.