Nickleby (1963)

D. Randall MacDougall
Colour

So, once again I find myself defending an Elvis adaptation of a classic which gets more than its share of stick. Complaints I’ve read include that it’s all done without leaving the studio, that all the songs are boringly old fashioned and that it’s ridiculously hard to follow. And individually it’s difficult to make an argument against any of those points. They’re pretty much all on the nose, flaws that have to be acknowledged before any defence of ‘Nickleby’ can be made. But just picking out those individual faults ignores that a lot of this film actually works, and that casting Elvis Presley as sensitive, earnest, idealistic school teacher Nicholas Nickleby isn’t the irredeemably dumb idea many would expect.


For starters, handing Dickens’ long and sprawling novel to a fillet-happy butcher was a brilliant stroke. I said that casting Elvis as a sensitive, earnest, idealistic school teacher isn’t as stupid as one might expect, but actually the whole school teacher thing is only really alluded to. There is no Dotheboys and no Wackford Squeers. Some may see this as a bowdlerisation of the worse kind – but I think it’s bloody genius. It means that the focus is Nicholas’s time with the Crummles and their theatrical troupe – and if there’s ever a place where Elvis is going to feel at home, it’s near the bright lights of the stage, occasionally getting up to belt out numbers.


Okay, the songs aren’t great, but even so it’s never going to be dull to watch the King of Rock’n’Roll take on ‘Goodbye, Dolly Gray’, ‘I’m Henry the Eighth, I am’ and ‘The Man who Broke the Bank of Monte Carlo’. The choice of predominantly English music-hall songs is an interesting one, as the setting is Victorian New York, not Victorian London, which at least it removes the need for Elvis to attempt any kind of accent. If there’s one thing we’ve observed from these Elvis adaptations of classic novels, it’s that the boy really doesn’t like accents.


Elsewhere we have Nicholas’s virtuous and beautiful cousin Kate, for whom Nicholas holds a torch; there’s his villainous uncle Ralph (Harry Morgan, who later showed up in a more friendly role in ‘Frankie & Johnny’); and his slow witted sidekick, Smike. And that’s the real problem with this film, even with the Smithfield-esque butchering there is still so much plot and context needed to make the story works and no place to put it beyond clunking dialogue and clumsy asides. (“Ah, Mr Nickleby. I saw your Uncle Ralph the other day in his counting-house and a less pleasant cove I have scarcely glimpsed” is an actual piece of dialogue.) As the film progresses it becomes truly hard to work out why X hates Y, or what the history is between A and B, or why F is behaving in quite that way to G (and who the fuck is G anyway?) Indeed in an adaptation this confused and liberal, knowing the book becomes a positive disadvantage – as plot, character and relations are all gleefully subverted for ease, simplicity and sometimes just plain perversity. For example, we have Nicholas’s rather queasy love for his own sheltered cousin, Kate. Although given that that character is his sister in the book, it was possible for the film makers to embark on an altogether more troubling exploration of incest.


So, yes it’s flawed and yes Elvis is not playing Nicholas Nickleby – in looks, temperament or the fact he keeps belting out tunes – in any way that Dickens would recognise. And yes it’s hard to follow just what the hell is going on. But that’s to ignore that for most of the film Elvis is having a great time. This is the best Elvis ‘putting on a show’ movie ever made, and to hark on about its problems is just to close your eyes and ears to how damned entertaining it is.