{ "id": "epptgsqzqy", "slug": "little-dorrit-1988-film", "title": "Little Dorrit (1988 film)", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form", "label": "Films by genre, form, and subject", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.adaptations", "label": "Adaptations of literature, stage, and other media", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.adaptations" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.adaptations.novel-and-short-fiction-adaptations", "label": "Films based on novels, novellas, and short fiction", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.adaptations.novel-and-short-fiction-adaptations" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.adaptations.novel-and-short-fiction-adaptations.films-based-on-19th-century-classics", "label": "Films based on 19th-century classics", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.adaptations.novel-and-short-fiction-adaptations.films-based-on-19th-century-classics" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.adaptations.novel-and-short-fiction-adaptations", "label": "Western Europe · 1946 to 2000: Films based on novels, novellas, and short fiction", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.adaptations.novel-and-short-fiction-adaptations", "path": [ { "id": "geo.weu", "label": "Western Europe", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946", "label": "Western Europe · 1946 to 2000", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form", "label": "Films by genre, form, and subject", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.adaptations", "label": "Adaptations of literature, stage, and other media", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.adaptations" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.adaptations.novel-and-short-fiction-adaptations", "label": "Films based on novels, novellas, and short fiction", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.adaptations.novel-and-short-fiction-adaptations" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Little Dorrit (1988) is a six-hour, two-part British film of Dickens' novel, written and directed by Christine Edzard, starring Alec Guinness and Derek Jacobi, told twice from two points of view.", "snippet": "Little Dorrit (1988) is a six-hour, two-part British film of Dickens' novel, written and directed by Christine Edzard, starring Alec Guinness and Derek Jacobi, told twice from two points of view.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.adaptations.novel-and-short-fiction-adaptations.films-based-on-19th-century-classics", "markdown": "# Little Dorrit (1988 film)\n\n*Little Dorrit* is a two-part, six-hour British film adaptation of [Charles Dickens](https://www.edgepedia.org/charles-dickens)' 1857 novel, written and directed by Christine Edzard and produced by her husband Richard Goodwin. It tells the story of Amy Dorrit, born and raised in the [Marshalsea](https://www.edgepedia.org/marshalsea) debtors' prison, and Arthur Clennam, twice: first from Clennam's point of view, then from Dorrit's. With roughly 250 cast members and 242 speaking roles, it was shot almost entirely inside converted London warehouses and earned two Academy Award nominations, including one for [Alec Guinness](https://www.edgepedia.org/alec-guinness) as William Dorrit.[1](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/little-dorrit-1988) • [2](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-13-ca-451-story.html)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Length and form | Six hours in two parts, subtitled \"Nobody's Fault\" and \"Little Dorrit's Story\"; Ebert lists the total running time as 357 minutes[1](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/little-dorrit-1988) • [3](https://lasr.cs.ucla.edu/project-members/reiher/reviews/little.dorrit.html) |\n| Cast | About 250 actors, including Alec Guinness, Derek Jacobi, Sarah Pickering, Joan Greenwood, Cyril Cusack, Roshan Seth, and Robert Morley[2](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-13-ca-451-story.html) |\n| Budget | Around $8.6 million by the Los Angeles Times; the Washington Post reported $9 million[2](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-13-ca-451-story.html) • [4](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1988/01/02/little-dorrits-great-expectations/70fc2883-7cd0-4eea-9317-0a0a7dd6e09e/) |\n| Filming location | Sands Films, two converted warehouses on the banks of the Thames in London's Docklands; all but one shot was filmed there[2](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-13-ca-451-story.html) |\n| Awards | Two Oscar nominations (Guinness for Best Supporting Actor, Edzard for adapted screenplay); LAFCA Best Picture 1988; Evening Standard Best Actor for Jacobi[5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095530/awards/) |\n| Music | By Giuseppe Verdi, born one year after Dickens[6](https://www.tcm.com/articles/453737/little-dorrit-part-two-little-dorrit) |\n| UK reception | Critically hailed and ran for seven months at a top London cinema, opening to near-capacity houses at the Curzon West End[2](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-13-ca-451-story.html) • [4](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1988/01/02/little-dorrits-great-expectations/70fc2883-7cd0-4eea-9317-0a0a7dd6e09e/) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Story and performances\n\nThe film opens in the Marshalsea, where William Dorrit (Alec Guinness) has been confined for twenty years for nonpayment of debt. His younger daughter Amy (Sarah Pickering) has grown to love the prison as the only home she has ever known; she learned to read and write on its stairs. Amy takes work in the gloomy house of the grasping Mrs. Clennam ([Joan Greenwood](https://www.edgepedia.org/joan-greenwood)), where she first meets her son Arthur ([Derek Jacobi](https://www.edgepedia.org/derek-jacobi)), and where she discovers a clue to an inheritance the mother is determined to keep from him.[1](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/little-dorrit-1988)\n\nGuinness's William Dorrit, the self-styled \"father of the Marshalsea,\" cadges handouts he calls testimonials while hiding his shame at his daughter's servitude, and Ebert described his deathbed scene as having an \"infinitely muted pathos.\" Jacobi plays Arthur as a prematurely old man who has missed his chance at happiness; Garry Wills, writing in *The New York Review of Books*, found his Arthur \"winningly dithery\" and more vigorous when seen through Amy's eyes in part two.[1](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/little-dorrit-1988) • [8](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1989/02/02/dorrit-without-politics/)\n\nEdzard toned down the sentimentality of the novel, in which the central pair of lovers is notably undemonstrative, and added a layer of half-confessed ardor to make them more vivid on screen. Wills also noted that she sheered off some of the flamboyant minor characters that overshadow the lovers in the original.[8](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1989/02/02/dorrit-without-politics/)\n\n## Production\n\nChristine Edzard, who wrote and directed the film, and Richard Goodwin, her husband and co-producer, worked from Sands Films, the private studio they had built from two warehouses on the Thames in London's Docklands twelve years earlier. Outside filmmaking the couple also manufactured dollhouses, and the same workshops produced much of the film: the sets and costumes were made from scratch, and miniatures were constructed for backgrounds.[1](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/little-dorrit-1988) • [2](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-13-ca-451-story.html) • [6](https://www.tcm.com/articles/453737/little-dorrit-part-two-little-dorrit)\n\nGoodwin brought considerable industry weight to the project; as the partner of Lord Brabourne he had produced films including *Murder on the Orient Express*, *Death on the Nile*, and [David Lean](https://www.edgepedia.org/david-lean)'s *[A Passage to India](https://www.edgepedia.org/a-passage-to-india-film)*. Despite the modest budget, the production attracted a large portion of the British acting establishment, in part because actors considered it a worthwhile project.[2](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-13-ca-451-story.html)\n\nEdzard had said she did not want to film *Little Dorrit* unless she could do \"the whole book,\" and the two-part structure reflects that. When Thorn-EMI, the company that originally funded the project, was taken over during production by Cannon, which admitted the film was not its kind of movie, Edzard and Goodwin bought back the UK cinema rights with their own money.[2](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-13-ca-451-story.html)\n\n## Structure and point of view\n\nThe film opens by announcing that the story will be told twice. Part one, \"Nobody's Fault,\" is told through the eyes of Arthur Clennam; part two, \"Little Dorrit's Story,\" retells the same ground through the eyes of [Little Dorrit](https://www.edgepedia.org/little-dorrit). The reviewers Joss Lutz Marsh, a scholar of Dickens and film, note that Edzard used Dickens' own line \"This history must sometimes see with Little Dorrit's eyes\" to close part one and open part two.[3](https://lasr.cs.ucla.edu/project-members/reiher/reviews/little.dorrit.html) • [7](https://www.enotes.com/topics/little-dorrit/criticism/criticism/joss-lutz-marsh-essay-date-1993)\n\nThe repeated scenes are not identical. They differ not only in viewpoint but in subtle details of conversation, settings, and even costumes, so that a line of throwaway dialogue in the first version may prove crucial in the second. Roger Ebert, the [Chicago Sun-Times](https://www.edgepedia.org/chicago-sun-times) critic, argued that this double vision is not merely a formal conceit but creates genuine romantic tension, since Clennam and Dorrit are plainly in love and neither can admit it.[1](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/little-dorrit-1988)\n\nThe two parts are not independent works. The first does not conclude the story, and the second does not supply enough information on its own; the original novel's working title, \"Nobody's Fault,\" supplies the first part's refrain, a recurring comment that nothing is anybody's blame and therefore nothing can be done, which underlines the film's theme of society's collective responsibility for its least fortunate.[3](https://lasr.cs.ucla.edu/project-members/reiher/reviews/little.dorrit.html) • [2](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-13-ca-451-story.html)\n\n## Reception and awards\n\nThe film opened at the Curzon West End in London in late 1987 to rave reviews and near-capacity houses, and British critics called it the finest Dickens adaptation since David Lean's *Great Expectations* forty years earlier. It ran there for seven months. It opened in Los Angeles on November 16, 1988, with the two parts requiring separate admissions.[4](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1988/01/02/little-dorrits-great-expectations/70fc2883-7cd0-4eea-9317-0a0a7dd6e09e/) • [2](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-13-ca-451-story.html) • [9](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-16-ca-17-story.html)\n\nAt the 1989 Academy Awards it received two nominations: Guinness for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and Edzard for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. It was also nominated for two BAFTAs (adapted screenplay and costume design), and Guinness was nominated for a Golden Globe. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association named it Best Picture of 1988 and gave Guinness its Best Supporting Actor award; Jacobi won the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actor.[5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095530/awards/)\n\nCritical opinion has not been uniform. A 2011 review complained that the pacing is slow and the second half repeats too much material from the first, and an earlier Los Angeles-based reviewer noted that the film revisits too much and introduces few new characters in its second half, while also conceding that it is \"extremely entertaining, artistically satisfying, and socially conscious.\"[10](https://dickensblog.com/2011/03/01/little-dorrit-1988/) • [3](https://lasr.cs.ucla.edu/project-members/reiher/reviews/little.dorrit.html) The film critic David Sterritt, writing for [Turner Classic Movies](https://www.edgepedia.org/turner-classic-movies) in 2011, called it \"better still\" than the well-regarded 2008 BBC miniseries and a masterpiece whose seriousness, subtlety, and inventiveness outstrip every other Dickens film he had seen.[6](https://www.tcm.com/articles/453737/little-dorrit-part-two-little-dorrit)\n\n## Place among Dickens adaptations\n\n*Little Dorrit* has been adapted rarely: David Sterritt counted five versions between 1913 and 2008, against about two dozen apiece for *Oliver Twist* and *A Christmas Carol*. The 1988 film and the 2008 BBC miniseries written by Andrew Davies are both counted among the high-quality versions. Scholars have read Edzard's film as a commentary on the era of its production, in the heritage-film mode, whose recreation of the Victorian past carries the aesthetics of the 1980s.[6](https://www.tcm.com/articles/453737/little-dorrit-part-two-little-dorrit) • [11](https://repository.londonmet.ac.uk/7316/1/302441.pdf)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Roger Ebert, \"Little Dorrit\" review, Chicago Sun-Times (December 16, 1988)](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/little-dorrit-1988)\n2. [Sue Summers, \"Eccentric, You Say? No, a Labor of Love,\" Los Angeles Times (November 13, 1988)](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-13-ca-451-story.html)\n3. [Peter Reiher, review of Little Dorrit, UCLA](https://lasr.cs.ucla.edu/project-members/reiher/reviews/little.dorrit.html)\n4. [Matt Wolf, \"'Little Dorrit's' Great Expectations,\" The Washington Post (January 1988)](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1988/01/02/little-dorrits-great-expectations/70fc2883-7cd0-4eea-9317-0a0a7dd6e09e/)\n5. [Little Dorrit (1987) Awards, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095530/awards/)\n6. [David Sterritt, \"Little Dorrit: Part Two,\" TCM (October 2011)](https://www.tcm.com/articles/453737/little-dorrit-part-two-little-dorrit)\n7. [Joss Lutz Marsh, \"Inimitable Double Vision: Dickens, Little Dorrit, Photography, Film\" (1993)](https://www.enotes.com/topics/little-dorrit/criticism/criticism/joss-lutz-marsh-essay-date-1993)\n8. [Garry Wills, \"Dorrit Without Politics,\" The New York Review of Books (February 1989)](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1989/02/02/dorrit-without-politics/)\n9. [Sheila Benson, \"Love, Politics Reign in Epic 'Little Dorrit',\" Los Angeles Times (November 16, 1988)](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-16-ca-17-story.html)\n10. [Dickensblog, \"Dickens on acid\" (March 2011)](https://dickensblog.com/2011/03/01/little-dorrit-1988/)\n11. [Heritage-film analysis of Little Dorrit, London Metropolitan University repository](https://repository.londonmet.ac.uk/7316/1/302441.pdf)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Adaptations of literature, stage, and other media › Films based on novels, novellas, and short fiction › Films based on 19th-century classics*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/little-dorrit-1988-film", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/little-dorrit-1988-film.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Little Dorrit (1988 film)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/little-dorrit-1988-film. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Little Dorrit (1988 film)](https://www.edgepedia.org/little-dorrit-1988-film)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/little-dorrit-1988-film](https://www.edgepedia.org/little-dorrit-1988-film). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Little Dorrit (1988 film)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/little-dorrit-1988-film. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Little Dorrit is a six-hour, two-part British film of Dickens' novel, written and directed by Christine Edzard, starring Alec Guinness and Derek Jacobi, told twice from two points of view." }