Dickens and Surrealist Cinema: or the post from the end of December that never was published

Have you heard of that style of cinema in which a person may be portrayed as actually shedding a river of tears? Or images may have more symbolic import than “real” import--you know that the character is not actually a giant, but because he seems so overbearing, overpowering and gigantic to this other character, he is made to appear that much larger for this scene.  It is an interesting approach, and for some stories works well.

As I have been reading Little Dorrit, I keep on thinking that odd style would really suit this book; has anyone tried fantastical realism with Dickens?  Take this, a Mr. Casby had been introduced as very benevolent and patriarchal in appearance, long beard and all, and another character, Mr. Pancks is introduced “,with a snort and a puff,” upon which Mr. Clennam, though whom much is related reflects, “much as an unwieldy ship in the Thames River may sometimes be seen heavily driving with the tide, broadside on, stern first, in its own way and in the way of everything else, though making a great show of navigation, when all of a sudden, a little coaly steam-tug will bear down upon it, take it in tow, and bustle off with it; similarly the cumbrous patriarch had been taken in tow by the snorting Pancks, and was now following in the wake of that dingy little craft.”  

Or how this would look. A young lady is looking upon the ruins of Rome and reflecting on ruins in people’s lives and ruins in England when Mrs. General, who is often called “the varnisher” comes in.  Mr. Eustace is the writer of some travel journals who never compares anything favorably to England. “Up, then, would come Mrs. General; taking all the color out of every thing, as nature and art had taken it out of herself;...looking everywhere for Mr. Eustace and company, and seeing nothing else; scratching up the driest little bones of antiquity, and bolting them whole without any human visitings--like a ghoul in gloves.”

Visualize, visualize.  It isn’t enough to show her as powdery and wigged and stiffly full of proprieties.  Mrs. General must also be attended by proprieties.  She is a most varnished varnisher, but also a “ghoul in gloves”.  The whole thing with her gloves reminds me of some of the stuff I have read and seen in reference to Disney’s use of gloves on characters.  

In re-reading the first few paragraphs, I saw again the blistering, glaring, staring day in Marseille. Everything stares in the too bright day, his description takes you through the streets and through a church-the only refuge from the heat--and into the prison, where there are two people in a cell and other vermin.  One of them is described as having a distinctive nose.  He doesn’t exactly smile, but his mustache comes up and his nose goes down.  He was amazingly acted by Andy Serkis in the film version I saw.  Other than height, he was everything the book described.  Can you imagine taking this approach, though, of showing Dickens’ more peculiar or more shocking imagery on the screen?  Just as in the books, you would not always see barnacles when you saw the Barnacles--who exist throughout the British government and are paramount in the circumlocution office, you would not always be shown a ghoul in Mrs. General’s place, but sometimes, where appropriate, you would see these sorts of things.  It might be a longer mini-series, but I think it would be fantastically delightful.