The film has taken great pains to do the Dickens moods justice in the cathedral corridors and cryptic vaults, with fogs and choir boys, and Claude Rains enhances the realism of the Dickens spirit. This was Dickens' last novel and left unfinished, but after the last chapter it's already obvious who the murderer is, and the film adaptations, especially this, have simply followed the logical consequences of Dickens' hints. When you have read the novel you must draw the conclusion, that it was unnecessary for Dickens to finish it, and that's maybe why Dickens just didn't - the main thing had already been told.
The Jasper figure is one of Dickens' eeriest and most debatable characters, a church singer in Christian service who leads a double life, and the novel and story seems to be something of an effort to probe into the phenomenon of double characters with double lives. He actually loves his nephew and his becoming bride, but he is so infatuated with the bride and frustrated by his personal sexual shortcomings that he is on the verge of a breakdown and falls to the temptation of losing control - which he finds reason to bitterly regret afterwards. So the novel is actually a tragedy, and the film follows suit and takes the consequences at full length - at which Dickens himself hesitated and died.
Both the novel and Claude Rains make the Jasper figure unforgettable.
The Jasper figure is one of Dickens' eeriest and most debatable characters, a church singer in Christian service who leads a double life, and the novel and story seems to be something of an effort to probe into the phenomenon of double characters with double lives. He actually loves his nephew and his becoming bride, but he is so infatuated with the bride and frustrated by his personal sexual shortcomings that he is on the verge of a breakdown and falls to the temptation of losing control - which he finds reason to bitterly regret afterwards. So the novel is actually a tragedy, and the film follows suit and takes the consequences at full length - at which Dickens himself hesitated and died.
Both the novel and Claude Rains make the Jasper figure unforgettable.