The Boy and the Convict.

The first of many screen adaptations of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations is, by necessity, a brisk affair, but it's easy to follow even if it does feel a bit rushed at times. The Brits were still a few years behind the Americans when it came to set design, however.

A boy is visiting his mother's grave when an escaped convict comes upon him and pleads for his aid. The boy fetches him food and helps strike off his fetters. After he flees, he even sets the pursuers on the wrong path. Seven years later, the escaped man is a wealthy Australian miner. Remembering the lad who had done him a good deed, he makes him a rich man. However, the free man is not content, but must return to England, his wife and child....

Those of us who are fans of Charles Dickens will instantly recognize this as a heavily abridged version of GREAT EXPECTATIONS, lumbered with a happy ending.It's an elaborate British production and therefore cinematically primitive. George A. Smith's experiments of a decade earlier had washed over the landscape and receded, leaving no apparent trace behind.The camera sits in the middle of the audience and the show show proceeds between the proscenium arch.

Elsewhere, there are signs of experimentation, even in Britain, where Percy Stowe is doing interesting work, but for the moment, director David Aylott's entire interest lies in putting on Dickens for the cheap nickelodeon seats. Because Dickens sells.