Dickens on screen is no recent phenomenon, as DAVID WHETSTONE has been finding out

TELEVISION viewers have never had to wait very long before the next Charles Dickens adaptation comes along and currently we are going through a purple patch.

Great Expectations was a highlight over Christmas and the second and concluding part of The Mystery of Edwin Drood is on BBC2 tonight.

This being the bicentenary of the great storyteller’s birth – Dickens having entered this world on February 7, 1812 – it’s not surprising.

But film-makers have always been drawn to Dickens’s stories, as you will see if you attend Dickens and the Silent Screen, a programme of screenings of early film adaptations in Durham starting next week.

They have been organised by Durham film historian Dr David Williams who has a passion for early cinema.

“The first film that was made was in 1901 which was a 13-scene version of A Christmas Carol, but only three scenes of it are known to exist,” says Dr Williams.

He explains the early 20th Century offerings formed part of the fairground “ghost shows”. He imagines they must have been a source of great amusement.

The opening programme of screenings at Clayport Library, Durham, next Tuesday will feature extracts from four other versions of A Christmas Carol.

You will also see a 1903 snippet from Nicholas Nickleby, which lasts three minutes.

Dr Williams says it was made for one of the end-of-the-pier “What the Butler Saw” machines where you put your penny in a slot to see the flickering pictures.

The scene depicted is set at Dotheboys Hall (which Dickens based on an educational establishment near Bowes, County Durham) where young Smike is being beaten by vindictive teacher Wackford Squeers and Nicholas intervenes.

The first of Dr Williams’ Durham screenings will also feature early versions of Oliver Twist and The Old Curiosity Shop. Later Tuesday evening programmes will feature Bleak House, Little Dorrit, David Copperfield, The Pickwick Papers, The Cricket on the Hearth, A Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist.

Dr Williams says similar screenings, featuring films from various archives, are taking place in London at the National Film Theatre – but the ones at Clayport Library are the only ones in the North East.

It seems the silent movie makers couldn’t resist Dickens.

“There were five versions of A Christmas Carol made before 1924, some 10 minutes long and one 30 minutes long,” says Dr Williams.

“The Danes were very fond of Dickens. A man called AW Sandberg did several screen versions of Dickens’s stories in the 1920s, including Little Dorrit which we’re showing.”

Dickens died in 1870 so he just missed out on the earliest days of cinema. You can’t help feeling he would have embraced the new medium.

As Dr Williams says: “He is still one of the most popular novelists and I think nearly all of his books are still in print.

“He would have liked that because he was a real populist. If one of his novels proved not to be quite so popular, I think he used to get quite upset about it.”

He was certainly anything but a recluse. Dr Williams has researched into his trips to the North East when he would walk miles between venues to read from his work and see it performed.

It looks as if he kept to a punishing schedule. For instance, on September 21, 1858, he appeared at the Central Hall in Darlington. Dr Williams says: “Apparently he had some difficulty in finding the place and was not too pleased, since it was his plan always to have time to check the acoustics of each hall he visited.”

Then on September 22 he was at Durham’s New Town Hall, according to reports, for a performance of A Christmas Carol.

The Durham Advertiser described his audience as “numerous and fashionable”. But in a letter to a friend, Dickens complained that the hall wasn’t big enough and that there had been speeches from “the Mayor and local bores”.

The following day he walked to Sunderland and the day after that to Newcastle.

“It seems that he enjoyed the personal solitude of walking and the facility of gently absorbing the atmosphere of the locations he passed through,” says Dr Williams.

Dr Williams is a 79-year-old former schoolteacher and lecturer with an enduring passion for film. He was awarded the MBE for services to media studies.

The first of his free sessions at Clayport Library on Tuesday starts at 7.30pm. Musical accompaniment to the silent screenings will be provided by George Hetherington, whose mother used to be a cinema accompanist.

:: DICKENS trudged along many North East streets and you can follow in his footsteps in the coming weeks.

Two Dickens walks have been organised by the Lit & Phil, Westgate Road, Newcastle – one on February 18 and the other on March 10. Both are at 10.30am.

The walks will start and finish at the Lit & Phil and take in streets he would have known in the mid-19th Century.

A plaque was installed on the wall of the old Music Hall on Nelson Street a few years ago, one of the many places where the writer entertained.

Walkers will be entertained with some readings from Dickens’ work. Tickets, at £4 each, must be booked in advance. Tel. 0191 232 0192 or email library@litand phil.org.uk

On February 7, the actual bicentenary of Dickens’s birth, you can take part in What the Dickens!, a quiz and readings hosted by Gail-Nina Anderson.

It will take place in a room at the Union Rooms and start at 7pm. Tickets are £10 (including a 20% discount on food) and can be booked via the same number and email address.