Product Details

• Actors: Derek Jacobi, Joan Greenwood, Max Wall, Patricia Hayes, Luke Duckett
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Rated: G (General Audience)
• Number of tapes: 2
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• VHS Release Date: December 3, 1994
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301383877
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #100,739 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

The trials & tribulations of a young woman born & raised in debtor's prison provides the basis for this two-part adaptation of a Charles Dickens novel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique Treatment of a Dickens Novel, One I'll Watch Again, December 10, 1999

By 

Little Dorrit "ldorrit" (WA state) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little Dorrit - Part Two: Little Dorrit's Story [VHS] (VHS Tape)

In recent years there have been some excellent productions of Dicken's works, including the BBC's Martin Chuzzlewit and the lushly beautiful Our Mutual Friend, neither of these would I want to be without in my video library!

But this production of Little Dorrit is done with a totally different eye, a unique approach, that I thought takes you straight into the novel. The producers of this film built the most unique sets and you have the remarkable feeling of at first watching a play unfolding before you only to find as you watch and become familiar with the usual Dickens plethora of characters that you are actually on a street in London in front of the Marshallsea yourself. It must have been very like this once, with the noise and confusion of such a city pressing all about and out of it emerges first one story and then another.

I thought the technique of telling the same story twice through different eyes helped to explain many things that a straight once through telling would have missed.

Excellent acting, beautiful music, all from Verdi, and a screenplay that captures the spirit of a great novel, makes this one part of my library we've already watched several times!

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Rest of the Story & The Emotional Payoff, October 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Little Dorrit - Part Two: Little Dorrit's Story [VHS] (VHS Tape)

When I'd finished watching Part 1 of this film it was way past my bedtime on a work night, but I had to watch Part 2 anyway -- "just to see how it works out . . ." And I couldn't turn it off. Like Part 1, this is a beautiful, beautiful movie, full of richly realized characters with subtle and persuasive inter-relationships that are completely involving. For the duration of the movie these people will be the most important thing in the world to you, and the emotional payoff at the end is all the more effective -- restrained as it is -- for the careful development that has gone before.

Derek Jacobi has never been more appealing as the protagonist, but to call him out from all the wonderful presentations is to do a disservice to a roster that reads like a "best of British theater tradition."

Select this movie when you want to be transported to a different time, a different place, into the lives of people you will care about in a way that "escapist" entertainment simply cannot touch.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, atmospheric immersion into delicate & sweet story, October 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Little Dorrit - Part One : Nobody's Fault [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is a beautiful movie, an immersion experience into a wonderfully realized world drawn from the Dickens novel (a little "prettier," maybe, but I'm not complaining). The performances are superlative, especially Derek Jacobi. The entire cast presents understated and thoughtful characterizations that provide the foundation for an emotional payoff based on some of the subtlest gestures and phrases -- something not to be found in an action film (for instance). Some of the performances are over-the-top and not to be missed for their gleeful chewing of scenery: but this is completely consistent with the way Dickens wrote them.

This is a long complicated story and it requires your attention. Your time will be well repaid. You will come from this movie refreshed in mind and spirit (and go out and buy the book, probably).