Nicholas Nickleby is a 1947

1947 in film

The year 1947 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*May 22 - Great Expectations is premiered in New York.*November 24 : The United States House of Representatives of the 80th Congress voted 346 to 17 to approve citations for contempt of Congress against the "Hollywood Ten".*November 25...

 British

Cinema of the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Cavalcanti

Alberto Cavalcanti

Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti was a Brazilian-born film director and producer.-Early life:Cavalcanti was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a prominent mathematician. He was a precociously intelligent child, and by the age of 15 was studying law at university. Following an argument with a...

. The screenplay by John Dighton

John Dighton

John Dighton was a successful British playwright and screenwriter.Dighton wrote for the stage until 1936, when he made the transition to films...

 is based on the 1839 novel The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

. It is the first sound

Sound film

A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...

 screen adaptation of the book, following silent film

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

s released in 1903 and 1912.

Plot

After the patriarch

Patriarch

Originally a patriarch was a man who exercised autocratic authority as a pater familias over an extended family. The system of such rule of families by senior males is called patriarchy. This is a Greek word, a compound of πατριά , "lineage, descent", esp...

 of the family dies and leaves them with no source of income, Nicholas Nickleby, his mother, and his younger sister Kate venture to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 to seek help from their wealthy, cold-hearted uncle Ralph, an investor who arranges for Nicholas to be hired as a tutor

Tutor

A tutor is a person employed in the education of others, either individually or in groups. To tutor is to perform the functions of a tutor.-Teaching assistance:...

 at Dotheboys Hall in Yorkshire

Yorkshire

Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

 and finds Kate work as a seamstress. Nicholas meets Mr. Squeers just as he concludes business with Mr. Snawley, who is "boarding" his two unwanted stepsons.

Nicholas is horrified to discover his employers, the sadistic Mr. and Mrs. Squeers, run their boarding school

Boarding school

A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...

 like a prison and physically, verbally, and emotionally abuse their young charges on a regular basis. He eventually rebels and escapes, taking with him young crippled Smike.

Nicholas and Smike take lodgings with Newman Noggs. Nicholas endeavours to find a position, but rejects a low-paying position as a politician's secretary, and a job as a tutor of the French for the Kenwig daughters comes to comic disaster. He and Smike decide to search for work elsewhere. As they are leaving the city, they make the acquaintance of Madeline Bray, the sole support of her father, who gambled away his fortune and now is indebted to Nicholas's uncle.

In search of food and lodging, they stop at an inn, and the proprietor introduces them to actor-manager

Actor-manager

An actor-manager is a leading actor who sets up their own permanent theatrical company and manages the company's business and financial arrangements, sometimes taking over the management of a theatre, to perform plays of their own choice and in which they will usually star...

 Vincent Crummles, who owns and operates a travelling a theatrical troupe with his wife. Crummles hires them as actors and casts them in a production of Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...

. Despite its success, Nicholas decides to return to London when he receives a letter from his uncle's valet, Newman Noggs, who urges him to come back as quickly as possible, as his uncle has put his sister in great jeopardy despite a promise by him to make certain they come to no harm.

Kate has been subjected to unwanted attention from Sir Mulberry Hawk and Lord Verisopht, clients of her uncle, and when Nicholas overhears them bawdily discussing her in a tavern he is determined to defend his sister's honour. The cowardly Hawk refuses Nicholas's demand to "step outside" and flees, resulting in a carriage accident in which Hawk is injured. Hawk and Lord Verisopht argue over Hawk's lack of honour, and Hawk kills Lord Verisopht in a duel with pistols. Ralph Nickleby loses 6000 pounds in debt owed him, much to the delight of Noggs, who harbours a hidden desire for revenge against his employer.

Nicholas finds employment as a clerk with the benevolent Cheerybles, portly twin brothers whose nephew Frank begins to court Kate. They provide him a cottage in which Nicholas can place his family and Smike, who has been accepted warmly by all. Meanwhile, Squeers returns to London, planning to capture Smike and bring him back to Dotheboys Hall, and is engaged by Ralph Nickleby to stalk Nicholas and Smike. Squeers and Mr. Snawley make off with Smike "on the wishes of his father". Nicholas, aided by Noggs, intercepts them and foils the plot. Smike, severely beaten by Squeers, is nursed by Kate and falls in love with her.

Nicholas meets Madeline a third time when the Cheerybles assign Nicholas to help her situation in secrecy from her father. His uncle has been trying to coerce her father into giving Ralph her hand in marriage in exchange for settlement of his debt, and Mr. Bray finally accedes. Noggs warns Nicholas, who arrives at the Bray lodgings to find Madeline, unhappily dressed in a wedding gown, awaiting her fate. In a showdown with Ralph, they discover her father dead in his bedroom after Kate reveals to Madeline the true nature of Ralph Nickleby's character. Madeline faints and Nicholas carries her away, warning Ralph to leave her alone as she is now free of all obligations.

Ralph's hatred of Nicholas makes him determined to ruin him, but he is brought up short by Noggs, who has realized from the facts told him by Nicholas that Smike is actually Ralph's son, whom Ralph had Noggs take to Dotheboys. Ralph's hold over Noggs has compelled him to harbour the secret for fifteen years. Smike was sent to the Squeers after his mother's death, using a forged birth certificate, so that Ralph could keep her inheritance rather than let their child have it, as dictated by law. Further, Squeers hired Snawley to act the part of Smike's father to make his kidnapping

Kidnapping

In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...

 appear legal. Noggs delights in telling Ralph that Squeers has confessed the conspiracy to the authorities, and Ralph now faces prison and financial ruin.

Smike, fallen into hopelessless because Kate is in love with Frank, succumbs to his various ailments and dies just before Ralph arrives at Smike's deathbed. The police come to Ralph's house to arrest him. Ralph flees to his garret

Garret

A garret is generally synonymous in modern usage with a habitable attic or small living space at the top of a house. It entered Middle English via Old French with a military connotation of a watchtower or something akin to a garrison, in other words a place for guards or soldiers to be quartered...

 and hangs himself. True love prevails, and Nicholas and Madeline and Kate and Frank are wed.

Cast

• Sir Cedric Hardwicke ..... Ralph Nickleby
• Stanley Holloway
  Stanley Holloway
  Stanley Augustus Holloway, OBE was an English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist. He was famous for his comic and character roles on stage and screen, especially that of Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady...
  
   ..... Vincent Crummles
• Derek Bond
  Derek Bond
  Derek William Douglas Bond MC was a British actor.-Life and career:Derek Bond was born 26 January 1920 in Glasgow, Scotland. He attended Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Hampstead, London. He saw active service with the Grenadier Guards in North Africa during the Second World War, for which he...
  
   ..... Nicholas Nickleby
• Mary Merrall
  Mary Merrall
  Mary Merrall , born Elsie Lloyd, was an English actress whose career of over 60 years encompassed stage, film and television work.-Stage career:...
  
   ..... Mrs. Nickleby
• Sally Ann Howes
  Sally Ann Howes
  Sally Ann Howes is a British actress and singer, who currently holds dual British-American citizenship. Her career on stage, screen and television has spanned over six decades...
  
   ..... Kate Nickleby
• Aubrey Woods
  Aubrey Woods
  Aubrey Woods is an English actor. He was born in London.His television credits include: Z-Cars, Up Pompeii!, Doctor Who , Blake's 7, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and Ever Decreasing Circles...
  
   ..... Smike
• Jill Balcon
  Jill Balcon
  Jill Angela Henriette Balcon was an English film and radio actress. She made her film debut in Nicholas Nickleby , though she was best known for her stage, television, and radio work....
  
   ..... Madeline Bray
• Bernard Miles
  Bernard Miles
  Bernard James Miles, Baron Miles, CBE was an English character actor, writer and director. He opened the Mermaid Theatre in London in 1959, the first new theatre opened in the City of London since the 17th century....
  
   ..... Newman Noggs
• Alfred Drayton
  Alfred Drayton
  Alfred Drayton was a British film actor.Drayton worked in a brewery when he was 18 but having a good deal of amateur dramatics experience decided to go on stage. His first appearance on stage was The Beloved Vagabond at Cardiff in 1908 and his London debut was at the Haymarket Theatre the...
  
   ..... Wackford Squeers
• Sybil Thorndyke ..... Mrs. Squeers
• Vera Pearce
  Vera Pearce
  -Filmography:* The Shepherd of the Southern Cross * Just My Luck * Yes, Mr. Brown * That's a Good Girl * So You Won't Talk * Royal Cavalcade * Heat Wave * Southern Roses...
  
   ..... Mrs. Crummles
• James Hayter ..... Ned and Charles Cheeryble
• Emrys Jones
  Emrys Jones (actor)
  Emrys Jones was an English actor.Making his film debut in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's One of Our Aircraft Is Missing , he developed a career in the British cinema of the 1940s...
  
   ..... Frank Cheeryble
• Cecil Ramage ..... Sir Mulberry Hawk
• Timothy Bateson
  Timothy Bateson
  Timothy Dingwall Bateson was a British actor. The son of Dingwall Bateson, a solicitor later knighted, he was educated at Uppingham School and Wadham College, Oxford....
  
   ..... Lord Verisopht
• George Relph
  George Relph
  George Relph was an English actor. He acted in more than a dozen movies, and also many plays. He served in the British Armed Forces in World War I, and was shot in the leg, hindering his return to acting. But Relph eventually got back on stage, and his career continued...
  
   ..... Mr. Bray
• Frederick Burtwell
  Frederick Burtwell
  Frederick Burtwell was an English actor who featured in supporting roles in over 40 British films of the 1930s and 1940s.-Partial filmography:*Down Our Street * Just My Luck...
  
   .... Sheriff Murray

Critical reception

Bosley Crowther

Bosley Crowther

Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...

 of the New York Times felt "comparison to Great Expectations

Great Expectations (1946 film)

Great Expectations is a 1946 British film which won two Academy Awards and was nominated for three others...

puts it somewhat in the shade, mainly because the former was so much more exciting as to plot and a good bit more satisfying in the nature and performance of its characters. There are just no two ways about it; the story of Nicholas Nickleby — at least, in screen translation — is a good whole cut below that of Great Expectations and its tension is nowhere near as well sustained . . . No doubt, the compression of details and incidents compelled by John Dighton's script put Director Cavalcanti on a somewhat unenviable spot, which is evidenced by his failure to get real pace or tension in the film's last half. And this overabundance also hampers the rounding of characters . . . Withal, Nicholas Nickleby is amusing as a chromo of Dickensian life. It is only that Great Expectations has led us to expect so much more."

Time Out London observed, "For a director who dabbled in the avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

, Cavalcanti makes surprisingly little of the surreal possibilities of this convoluted Dickensian nightmare. As in Champagne Charlie

Champagne Charlie

-People:*George Leybourne, introduced the song "Champagne Charlie" to the London music hall, and was himself thereafter often referred to as "Champagne Charlie"*Charlie Nicholas, Scottish footballer nicknamed "Champagne Charlie"...

he collaborated with art director Michel Relph to create an impressively atmospheric Victorian London, but stylish visuals hardly compensate for the flat, cursory rendering of some of Dickens' best drawn characters. Only Bernard Miles as Noggs and Cedric Hardwicke as wicked Uncle Ralph are given enough space to establish a proper presence. Meagre and one-dimensional, the film is finally smothered by Ealing's cosy sentimentality."