A Solemn Pleasure
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

With his perpetually moist eyes, tousled hair, and ratty shoes, 11-year-old Barney Clark seems as if he might have loped onto the “Oliver Twist” set from a Charlie Chaplin two-reeler. Roman Polanski, who has guided the boy through Ronald Harwood’s satisfying adaptation of the Charles Dickens perennial, proves surprisingly simpatico with Chaplin in his willingness to pull out the emotional stops. Polanski is still too reserved, his worldview too dour, to completely adopt Chaplin’s embracing sentimentality, but the man who gave us “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Repulsion” has made one of his most perverse moves yet: He’s created a rock-solid family film.
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