Great Expectations (1998 film) Great Expectations (1998 film) Great Expectations is a 1998 contemporary film adaptation of Charles Dickens’s 1861 novel of the same name, co-written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón and starring Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hank Azaria, Robert De Niro, Anne Bancroft and Chris Cooper. It is known for having moved the setting of the original novel from 1812-1827 London to 1990s New York. The film is an abridged modernization of Dickens's 1861 novel, with the hero's name having also been changed from Pip to Finn, and the character Miss Havisham has been renamed Nora Dinsmoor. The film received mixed reviews. Ten-year-old
Great Expectations a reference to a "knowing man", a possible sketch of Bentley Drummle. Another evokes a house full of "Toadies and Humbugs", foreshadowing the visitors to Satis House in chapter 11. Margaret Cardwell discovered the "premonition" of "Great Expectations" from a 25 September 1855 letter from Dickens to W. H. Wills, in which Dickens speaks of recycling an "odd idea" from the Christmas special "A House to Let" and "the pivot round which my next book shall revolve." The "odd idea" concerns an individual who "retires to an old lonely house…resolved to shut out the world and hold no communion with