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 several subgenres popular in Dickens' time, as noted by Paul Davis and Philip V. Allingham. "Great Expectations" contains many comic scenes and eccentric personalities, which play an integral part in both the plot and the theme. Among the notable comic episodes are Pip's Christmas dinner in chapter 4, Wopsle's "Hamlet" performance in chapter 31, and Wemmick's marriage in chapter 55. Many of the characters have eccentricities: Jaggers with his punctillious lawyerly ways; the contrariness of his clerk, Wemmick, at work advising Pip to invest in "portable property", while in private living in a cottage converted into a castle; and the