GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Original British 11 inch x 17 inch Trade Advertisement for the 1946 David Lean Drama GREAT EXPECTATIONS, based on the novel by Charles Dickens and starring John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Bernard Miles, Francis L. Sullivan, Anthony Wager, Jean Simmons, Martita Hunt, Finlay Currie, Alec Guinness, Freda Jackson and Eileen Erskine.

Taking on Charles Dickens’s classic novel – a mix of coming-of-age story, social satire and gothic fable – David Lean and his collaborators establish the special credentials of their own medium in the opening reel, covering the orphan Pip’s fateful meeting with convict Magwitch in a Kent churchyard with a tour de force of moving camerawork, expressionist lighting and knife-edge editing.

Plucked from the provinces by an allowance from a mystery benefactor, Pip subsequently goes up in the world, but John Mills’s mild performance as the adult hero is upstaged by vivid supporting turns from Jean Simmons as the Young Estella, Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham and – in the first of his five roles for Lean – Alec Guinness as Herbert Pocket.

The artwork for this advert is identical to the original quad poster.

The Advertisement is in very good condition with a centre vertical fold.