Martin Chuzzlewit (1995)

BessWentworth

While the sets, costuming and lighting were indeed gorgeous, the director dwelt almost entirely on Paul Scofield's witheringly biting delivery and on the comicality of different Dicken's characters. One is left without a soul with which to engage, and the story line suffers quite a bit, indeed. Style won over warmth, and halfway through this beautiful and lavish production, it's lack of real heart simply drove me away. I tried and tried, but just couldn't slog my way through. The book, however, I've read and throroughy enjoyed at least twice! December 1, 2007

This Version of Martin Chuzzlewit

This Version of Martin Chuzzlewit is the best ever. Worth purchasing and viewing about once a year. July 12, 2007

Very entertaining. No DVD closed captioning

This was very well done. Kept a good pace, kept me captivated. Very entertaining story with some humor.

I did find it hard to follow the dialog with the various dialects of the characters, so I wanted to use subtitle. Alas! Subtitles are not enabled on DVDs in this series (BBC white covers). I switched from viewing the DVD via the component connection to viewing via the coax "VCR" connection. That allowed me to take advantage of the television's closed captioning capabilities. However, I had to sacrifice picture quality. January 27, 2007

I was surprised by how good this was

I am surprised that this was never recommended to me! It also surprised me with how long it was, not a rushed 2 hour version but one that takes its time to develop the storyline and characters. Highly Recomended! January 9, 2007

An adaptation the way it should be done!

I bought this as a Christmas gift for my Mother, but I hadn't realized how much I would also enjoy it. I saw this adaptation when it first came out and I was still a child, but seeing it again as an adult, I really can appreciate more of its humor and subtlety. Beyond this, since I read the original fairly recently, I can also say that it is very faithful to the book- in fact, the only problem that I had with any of it was that very little of the American scenes were included, and despite being an American myself, I thought that these were really one of the best parts of the book. However, the excellent performances (such as of Pecksniff, Jonas Chuzzlewit and Mr. Pinch) somewhat made up for this deficiency.

On the whole, I would say that this is an excellent adaptation and I highly recommend it. January 3, 2007

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