New Movies: Vice into Romance

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Dickens was congenitally unable to invent villains less interesting than his heroes. As Fagin, Ron Moody makes the beaky, sneaky old vulture a tragicomic creature whose greatest thievery is that of the film. If he has lost most of the Semitism, Moody also has dropped all of the anti. Harry Secombe is the endomorphic Mr. Bumble to the burble, and Oliver Reed is appropriately thick and menacing as Bill Sikes.

Next to the base figures, such exalted ones as Oliver (Mark Lester), Nancy (Shani Wallis) and other do-gooders inevitably seem insipid trifles. But even the knaves are topped by two performers: Bill Sikes' companion, a mangy, miserable mongrel, is the least appealing, most memorable dog since the Hound of the Baskervilles. And Jack Wild, 15, as The Artful Dodger, has polished gravel for a voice, a Toby jug for a head, and the suggestion of fame for a future. As well might be. The last boy to play the Dodger onscreen was a cockney-of-the-walk by the name of Anthony Newley.