Great Expectations

Great Expectations, motion picture about a poor boy who acquires wealth and social stature from a mysterious source, based on the novel by Charles Dickens. Released in 1946, this version of the often-filmed story won three Academy Awards. John Mills stars as Pip, who is called one day to come to a mansion owned by a strange old woman named Miss Havisham and play with a beautiful girl named Estella. Neither of them is particularly nice to him, but later he inherits a large sum of money and assumes the money came from the old woman. Pip goes to live as a gentleman in the city, where he meets Estella again and eventually learns that his fortune is the work of an escaped convict whom he helped as a child.

Director

• David Lean

Cast

• John Mills (Pip Pirrip)
• Valerie Hobson (Estella, her mother)
• Bernard Miles (Joe Gargery)
• Francis L. Sullivan (Jaggers)
• Martita Hunt (Miss Havisham)
• Finlay Currie (Abel Magwitch)
• Anthony Wager (Pip as child)
• Jean Simmons (Estella as child)
• Alec Guinness (Herbert Pocket)
• Ivor Barnard (Wemmick)
• Freda Jackson (Mrs. Gargery)
• Torin Thatcher (Bentley Drummle)
• Eileen Erskine (Biddy)
• Hay Petrie (Uncle Pumblechook)
• George Hayes (Compeyson)
• O. B. Clarence (Aged parent)
• Richard George (Sergeant)
• Everley Gregg (Sarah Pocket)
• John Burch (Mr. Wopsle)
• Grace Denbigh-Russell (Mrs. Wopsle)
• John Forrest (Pale young gentleman)
• Anne Holland (A relation)
• Frank Atkinson (Mike)
• Gordon Begg (Night porter)
• Edie Martin (Mrs. Whimple)
• Walford Hyden (Dancing master)
• Roy Arthur (Galley steersman)

Awards

• Academy Award for Best Art Direction, Set Decoration—Black and White (1947): John Bryan—Art Direction, Wilfred Shingleton—Set Decoration
• Academy Award for Best Cinematography—Black and White (1947): Guy Green