Masterpiece Classic: Great Expectations
Catalogue Number: 041497
ISBN Number: 0793663830
Producer: PBS Video
Subject: Drama
Language: English
Grade Level: 9 - 12, Post Secondary
Country Of Origin: United States
Copyright Year: 2012
Running Time: 180
Nothing is quite as it seems in this lush retelling of Dickens' classic coming-of-age story with colorful characters - conspirators, rogues, rakes, and wretches - and stunning performances by Gillian Anderson, David Suchet, Ray Winstone, Douglas Booth, and Vanessa Kirby. Young orphan Pip wants no more from life than to one day join his brother-in-law Joe at the blacksmith's forge. Until, that is, fate intervenes - twice. First, an escaped convict (Winstone) ambushes Pip in the marshes; and not long after, a wealthy, reclusive neighbor at the macabre Satis House - Miss Havisham (Andersen) - seeks Pip out as a playmate for her adopted daughter, Estella. Pip falls almost instantly in love with Estella, and realizes that he needs to be more than a simple blacksmith's apprentice if he ever hopes to win her. But Miss Havisham - a bride-to-be who was jilted at the altar years ago and still wears her wedding dress amidst the fossilized ruins of her wedding feast - has gone to great lengths to ensure that Estella will never so much as risk heartbreak, raising her more as a tool for vengeance than a child. But when Pip is mysteriously plucked from obscurity and lured to London by an anonymous benefactor hoping to make a gentleman out of him, he suddenly has unlimited wealth at his disposal - and true love in his future. Or so he thinks.
Available May 2012.
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