by Benjamin B
Unit photography by Guy Ferrandis
Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Sony Pictures

After building a career on decidedly adult fare, director Roman Polanski says his latest film, Oliver Twist, is for his children, ages 7 and 12. “I made the film very much for them [because] I realized that there’s nothing they can relate to in the movies I’ve made so far,” he says. “I thought it was time to film something for them — something that they could watch without saying, like they did after seeing The Pianist, that Harry Potter is much better.”

Based on Charles Dickens’ novel, Oliver Twist recounts the travails of a young orphan in England during the Industrial Revolution. Young Oliver (Barney Clark) escapes from a workhouse and travels to London, where he is taken in by Fagin (Ben Kingsley), a master thief who trains young boys to be pickpockets. When an affluent man notices Oliver’s gentle manner, he takes him into his own home, but Fagin and his colleagues aren’t willing to let one of their best pupils go. Over the course of the film, Oliver is torn between poverty and affluence, crime and virtue.

Polanski was orphaned at the age of 8 when his parents were sent to a concentration camp during World War II. “I was without parents at exactly the same age as Oliver, and I was living in the country also, going from family to family and place to place,” says the director. “So there is some of that feeling that I can sympathize or identify with. Also, I like the period, I like the story and I like Dickens. We can, of course, ask the psychiatrist if there’s more to it!”

To make Oliver Twist, Polanski turned once again to Polish director of photography Pawel Edelman, PSC, whose work on The Pianist (see AC June ’03) earned ASC and Academy Award nominations. More recently, Edelman garnered an ASC nomination for his work on Ray (AC Dec. ’04). Polanski says his camaraderie with Edelman “has little to do with nationality and a lot to do with character. Pawel is an extremely calm guy, which works very well with me because I sometimes get a bit hysterical. Pawel never loses his nerve; he’s always calm, even in the worst adversity. We have great fun and much professional satisfaction working together.”

Edelman recalls that Polanski’s initial brief for Oliver Twist was just that: brief. “At our first meeting, Roman told us he wanted to make this movie in a totally different way than The Pianist. He wanted the film to be ‘bigger than life.’ This applied to sets, costumes, makeup, lighting, lenses, everything. The idea was to exaggerate a world shown from a boy’s perspective.” Polanski adds, “My battle cry was ‘Make it Dickensian.’ Oliver Twist has two elements that are very important in Dickens: first is the humor, that kind of irony and sarcasm, and second are those exaggerated descriptions of his, which make the story so enjoyable to read. Each character is described in the utmost detail, and they’re extremely colorful.”

Oliver Twist involved 90 days of principal photography on a gigantic set that was designed by Allan Starski and built at Barrandov Studios in Prague. “There were more than 85 buildings, as well as five streets and a little stretch of river,” recalls Edelman. “It was really amazing!” He notes that Doré’s drawings for his 1872 book on London were a big inspiration for the production. “We studied many paintings and drawings of that period, but we liked the Doré book the most.”

Although Edelman did some prelighting on the sets, he confesses that “it didn’t usually help much, because we had to know precisely where the camera, the candles, the other light sources and the actors were going to be. So we only really knew how to approach the lighting after we saw the rehearsal. The typical shooting day went as follows: in the morning, we rehearsed for 60-90 minutes, then I did the lighting for 90 minutes while the makeup artists were working on the actors, and then we achieved the first master shot before lunch.”

“I discover the scene during rehearsals,” notes Polanski. “I usually don’t know what I’m going to shoot ahead of time.” During rehearsals, the director watches the scene through a viewfinder and positions himself to find the right angle. “I place myself as an observer and try and watch the scene from an observer’s viewpoint. Sometimes I will go from an observer’s viewpoint to a subjective viewpoint; it depends on the movie. With Oliver Twist, we go back and forth, like Dickens does.” He adds that the camera height was sometimes lowered to create Oliver’s POV: “That’s how children see the world, and the story is told more or less from the child’s point of view, so we had to place the camera more or less on his level.”

Polanski stresses that camera placement is key to his mise en scène. “That comes first for me. I don’t start with the lens [because] I think it’s arbitrary. I start with a rehearsal of the scene and determine where the camera should be placed. Let’s say, for example, that I want to film us sitting at this table. First of all, I will know what I want to see. If I want both characters to be on the same sort of level, I will want to go over the shoulder. If I go over the shoulder, then I know how much I want to frame, whether I want see the head and the shoulder, or whether I want to see half of the back of the head. Then I will choose the appropriate lens, but I will not move farther back or closer to you.

“If I want give the impression that it’s all seen by the character, then I won’t want to go over the shoulder, and I will place the camera more or less where the character is to give more or less the same impression that he has,” he continues. “And then I will choose the lens depending on how much I want to see on the sides, or how much I want to see behind.”

Polanski’s pictures are distinguished by the use of very few wide focal lengths. Edelman recalls that The Pianist was principally shot with two lenses, 27mm and 32mm, and he notes that Oliver Twist was shot with a 21mm and a 27mm. Lens choices “happen on the set,” says the cinematographer. “Roman has been shooting his movies with one or two lenses all his life. He likes wide lenses because he likes to see the characters integrated with the space.” The director adds, “A wide-angle lens gives you more depth of field, which is important when things that happen in the background have to be sharp, so that counts also. Of course, there is also more sensation of movement with a wide angle because you see more of the perspective change — the things on the sides of the frame move more than the things in front.”