This film was so prestigious and important to David O. Selznick that he put his producers title card after director George Cukor’s, just in case anyone didn’t know who was running the show. Cukor would feel the same slight a few years later, suffering Selznick’s axe midway through “Gone with the Wind”, but he made it through this one, a glorious streamlining of Dickens’s 850 page classic down to the bare essential characters and plot points. Much heart and humor, featuring young Freddie Bartholomew in probably his best performance as the child David, and W. C. Fields’ accomplished take on the proud Mr. Micawber.