Mister Quilp | |
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![]() U.S. theatrical poster | |
Directed by | Michael Tuchner |
Written by | Irene Kamp Louis Kamp |
Based on | The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens |
Produced by | Helen M. Strauss |
Starring | Anthony Newley David Hemmings |
Cinematography | Christopher Challis |
Edited by | John Jympson |
Music by | Elmer Bernstein |
Production company | |
Distributed by | EMI Distribution |
Release date |
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Running time | 118 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Mister Quilp (also known as The Old Curiosity Shop) is a 1975 British musical film directed by Michael Tuchner and starring Anthony Newley, David Hemmings and Jill Bennett. [1] It is based on the 1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens.
The film was one of several "Family Classics" made into modern musical films by Reader's Digest. [2] Mr. Quilp was theatrically distributed by EMI Films in the United Kingdom and by Avco Embassy Pictures in the USA.
In the VHS and Beta formats, it was released by Magnetic Video under the title The Old Curiosity Shop, though this release was heavily edited down by roughly 30 minutes. [3] Viewers in the UK have reported seeing it played on television in the 1980s. [4] To date, the film has never been officially released on DVD.
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Although the mixture of song, dance and Dickens proved potent enough in Oliver! [1968], the results in this Reader's Digest adaptation of The Old Curiosity Shop are distinctly flat and unappetising. Things bode ill from the very start, when Swiveller and Nell meet in a supposedly bustling London street which refuses to bustle no matter how often Michael Tuchner changes camera positions. Nothing gels: the studio set seems too spotless (the pavements and gutters are without a scrap of garbage or litter), the costumes seem fresh off the peg from the Old Dickensian Costume Shop, and the songs match the choreography in their clumsiness and lameness ("I may be simple-hearted but I think the world is grand" is a fair sample of the lyric). The acting doesn't improve matters: Anthony Newley consistently goes over the top as Quilp, his black eyebrows hurtling up and down, just about keeping pace with his darting arms and legs; and Sarah-Jane Varley's Nell becomes unpalatably winsome long before she catches cold and goes into her decline. In the final stretches, the difficulties of adapting the heavily episodic novel loom ridiculously large: Swiveller drops out of sight completely, Quilp's demise is handled too perfunctorily to have any effect, and the character of Kit, after long neglect, suddenly comes to the forefront. In a coda we see him ensconced as the new owner of the Curiosity Shop, walking around with his memories and singing – a scene so banal and pathetic that it might have made Dickens himself queasy." [5]
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "Anthony Newley plays the mean-spirited, hunchbacked money-lender Quilp in this film version of Charles Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop. The star also composed the songs in the manner of Lionel Bart's Oliver!. This is principally a sanitised, Americanised, family-orientated affair that nevertheless preserves some of the darker elements of the original. The performances, particularly Newley's, put the emphasis on grotesquerie." [6]
British film critic Leslie Halliwell said: "The novel, with its villainous lead, is a curious choice for musicalizing, and in this treatment falls desperately flat, with no sparkle of imagination visible anywhere." [7]
Critic Roger Ebert gave the film a mixed review, praising the music and Newley's performance, but criticizing the decision to center the film around the titular evil money-lender and failing to make the story compelling enough to hold interest. [8]
Anthony Newley was an English actor, singer, songwriter, and filmmaker. A "latter-day British Al Jolson", he achieved widespread success in song, and on stage and screen. "One of Broadway's greatest leading men", from 1959 to 1962 he scored a dozen entries on the UK Top 40 chart, including two number one hits. Newley won the 1963 Grammy Award for Song of the Year for "What Kind of Fool Am I?", sung by Sammy Davis Jr., and wrote "Feeling Good", which became a signature hit for Nina Simone. His songs have been sung by a wide variety of singers including Fiona Apple, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand, Michael Bublé and Mariah Carey.
David Edward Leslie Hemmings was an English actor and director. He is best remembered for his roles in British films and television programmes of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, particularly his lead roles as a trendy fashion photographer in the hugely successful avant-garde mystery film Blowup (1966), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and as a jazz pianist in Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975). Early in his career, Hemmings was a boy soprano appearing in operatic roles. In 1967, he co-founded the Hemdale Film Corporation. From the late 1970s on, he worked mainly as a character actor and occasionally as director.
The Old Curiosity Shop is one of two novels which Charles Dickens published along with short stories in his weekly serial Master Humphrey's Clock, from 1840 to 1841. It was so popular that New York readers stormed the wharf when the ship bearing the final instalment arrived in 1841.
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Sampson Brass is a fictional character in the 1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. He is a corrupt attorney who affects feeling for his clients, whom he then cheats. Among his clients is the villainous Daniel Quilp, the novel's antagonist. From Bevis Marks in the city of London, he assists Quilp in fraudulently gaining possession of Nell's grandfather's house, plots against Kit Nubbles, and hires and then dismisses Dick Swiveller.
Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? is a 1969 British musical film directed by Anthony Newley and starring himself, Joan Collins, Milton Berle, George Jessel and Bruce Forsyth.
Daniel Quilp is one of the main antagonists in the novel The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens, written in 1840. Quilp is a vicious, ill-tempered and grotesque dwarf and is the villain of the story. Quilp is as near as Dickens ever came to creating a monster. Actors who have portrayed him include Hay Petrie, Anthony Newley, Patrick Troughton, Trevor Peacock, and Toby Jones.
The Old Curiosity Shop is a British television film adapted from the Charles Dickens's 1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop. It stars Irish actress Sophie Vavasseur as Nell Trent, with Derek Jacobi as her grandfather, Toby Jones as Quilp and George MacKay as Nell's friend, Kit. It was broadcast on 26 December 2007 on ITV. The adaptation is in general very faithful to the novel. The most significant changes are the removal of the Garlands and their household and the identity of the Single Gentleman who is changed from Grandfather's brother to his estranged son and Nell's father.
Michael John Tuchner was a British film and theatre director.
The Man Inside is a 1958 British crime adventure film directed by John Gilling and starring Jack Palance, Anita Ekberg, Nigel Patrick, Anthony Newley and Bonar Colleano. It was produced by Irving Allen and Albert R. Broccoli for Warwick Film Productions. The screenplay by David Shaw was based on the 1954 novel of the same name by M. E. Chaber. It was Bonar Colleano's final film role.
The Old Curiosity Shop is a nine part 1979 BBC TV series based on the 1841 novel by Charles Dickens. It was directed by Julian Amyes, and adapted by William Trevor.
The Old Curiosity Shop is a 1934 British drama film directed by Thomas Bentley and starring Elaine Benson, Ben Webster and Hay Petrie. It is an adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop.
Joseph Clayton Clark, who worked under the pseudonym "Kyd", was a British artist best known for his illustrations of characters from the novels of Charles Dickens. The artwork was published in magazines or sold as watercolor paintings, rather than included in an edition of the novels.
The Old Curiosity Shop is a 1921 British silent drama film directed by Thomas Bentley and starring Mabel Poulton, William Lugg and Hugh E. Wright. It is based on the 1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. Bentley remade the novel as a sound film in 1934.
The Old Curiosity Shop is a 1914 British silent drama film directed by Thomas Bentley and starring Mai Deacon, Warwick Buckland and Alma Taylor. It was based on the 1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens, and was the first of three film adaptations of the story by Bentley. It was made by the Hepworth Company, the leading British film studio before the First World War.
The Old Curiosity Shop is a 1984 Australian animated film based on the 1841 novel by Charles Dickens about a young girl (Nell) who lives with her grandfather in a shop, and what happens after they are evicted from the shop by Quilp, a moneylender. It was made by Burbank Films who produced a number of animated films based on classic novels. Their slate cost an estimated $11 million. The Dickens films sold to 20th Century Fox in the US and to the Seven Network in Australia.
The Old Curiosity Shop is a 1911 American silent short drama film produced by the Thanhouser Company. The film is an adaptation of the 1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens that was limited to the time constrictions of the single reel format. The film focuses on the grandfather who gambles into poverty and the consequences which eventually claim the life of Little Nell. Its survival and attribution as a Thanhouser film was noted by Kamilla Elliott in her 2003 book Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate under the title Little Nell. In 2012, the work was confirmed to be a Thanhouser production at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. The identification of the film as Little Nell arose due to head of the film having been lost.
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Richard "Dick" Swiveller is a fictional character in the 1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. Initially a comical accessory to the antagonists in the novel, he undergoes a transformation, becoming a key helpmate bridging the depiction of the main characters that are either mostly villainous or goodly in nature.