It stars Ron Moody, Oliver Reed, Harry Secombe, Shani Wallis, Jack Wild, and Mark Lester in the title role.

In 2017, a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out magazine ranked it the 69th-best British film ever.

Sowerberry's other apprentice Noah Claypole latee bullies Oliver, who eventually retaliates and is thrown first into a coffin and then into the cellar.

Dodger brings Oliver to a hideout for young pickpockets led by Fagin, who instructs the gang in the art of stealing.

In the morning, Sikes's girlfriend Nancy and her friend Bet arrive at the hideout to collect his money.

At a bookstall, Dodger steals a wallet from Mr. Brownlow, who mistakes Oliver for being the thief and has police arrest him.

During the errand, Nancy and Sikes grab Oliver and bring him back to Fagin's den.

They present a locket belonging to Oliver's mother, who arrived at the workhouse penniless and died during childbirth.

Meanwhile, to introduce Oliver to a life of crime, Sikes forces him to take part in a house robbery.

Later, at the tavern, Nancy offers to put Oliver to bed, but Sikes orders his dog Bullseye to guard the boy.

When Nancy tries to pull Sikes away, he drags her behind the staircase of London Bridge and bludgeons her, injuring her fatally.

However, Bullseye refuses him and runs away, he returns to the scene where Nancy has succumbed to her injuries, one of the locals says that dog was there just now and another recognises him as Bullseye, Bill Sikes dog and says they are always around together and realising it was Bill who had killed Nancy says he can find Sikes for them.

They dance off into the sunrise together, happily determined to live out the rest of their days as thieves while Oliver returns to Brownlow's home for good.

The film used mostly young unknowns, among them Mark Lester (Oliver), Shani Wallis (Nancy) and Jack Wild as The Artful Dodger, but also featured Hugh Griffith, an Oscar winner for Ben-Hur, in the role of the Magistrate.

Ron Moody later told an interviewer that when it was first proposed that he play Fagin, he felt that character was "pretty vicious and unpleasant; I didn't want to do that.

[8][9] In the United Kingdom, the film played for 90 weeks at the Leicester Square Theatre in London, grossing $1,992,000.

It was hailed by Pauline Kael in her review published in The New Yorker as being one of the few film versions of a stage musical that was superior to the original show, which she suggested she had walked out on.

"It is very nearly universal entertainment, one of those rare films like The Wizard of Oz that appeals in many ways to all sorts of people.

[13] John Simon wrote "Oliver is a nice, big movie musical [about] which it is hard to say anything of special interest to the reader or even to oneself.

It rarely stops moving and it has the touch of melodramatic excitement... a prancing musical film which by reason of its stagecraft and performance is more exhilarating than it was on the stage, better rounded in its 'free' adaptation.

"[15] Rotten Tomatoes awards the film a 90% "fresh" rating based on 77 reviews, with an average score of 8/10; the critics' consensus reads: "Oliver!

transforms Charles Dickens' muckraking novel into a jaunty musical Victorian fairytale, buoyed by Ron Moody's charming star turn and Onna White's rapturous choreography.

"[16] At his death in 2015, The Forward said that Moody succeeded in transforming "a viciously anti-Semitic literary portrait into a joyous musical onscreen image.

The US DVD has the film, complete with its original overture and entr'acte music, spread across two sides of a double-sided disc, separated at the intermission.