The cinema : 1952 (1952)

20 THE CINEMA possible once more in order to make the audience share Pip's own view of the scene. The adults were all on high seats ; Pip we kept low down. The whole thing seems oppressive, because of Pip's anxiety about being discovered. Even John Bryan's sets for the film — and later on for Oliver Twist, too — used artificial perspectives in order to bring up the atmosphere, and create closed-in or deep or lofty impressions to suit the particular dramatic needs of the scene. As far as the scenes with Pip are concerned we were not aiming at realism. What we wanted to create all the time was the world as it seemed to Pip when his imagination was distorted with fear. That, after all, was what Dickens himself did. Extract from the Post-Production Script oj GREAT EXPECTATIONS* PIP STEALS THE FOOD Fade in : i Interior Pip's Bedroom Dawn. Medium Close Shot Pip lying in bed awake Music starts. He pushes the clothes off and sits up in bed -he is fully clothed in his outdoor clothes -he crawls down the bed and looks out of the window. 2 Exterior Joe Gargery's House Dawn. Camera shooting on to Pip's bedroom window Pip can be seen peering through one of the window-panes, 3 Long Shot of the marshes and the estuary from Pip's eyeline a mist hangs over the water ; a leafless tree waves its branches in foreground. * Producer: Ronald Neame for Cineguild. Director: David Lean. Executive Producer: Anthony HavelockAllan. Screenplay: David Lean and Ronald Neame. Director of Photography: Guy Green. Production Designer: John Bryan. Editor: Jack Harris. Music: Walter Goehr. Leading Players : John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Bernard Miles.