DICKENS WITH A TWIST; `GREAT EXPECTATIONS' REWORKED INTO MODERN AMERICAN TALE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

We've seen ``Clueless,'' the modern mallrat rendition of Jane Austen's ``Emma.'' We've seen the MTV-style ``William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet.'' We've even seen Henry James with full frontal nudity in ``The Wings of the Dove.''

Now there's ``Great Expectations,'' a contemporary rendition of Charles Dickens' 1860s novel. The latest in a series of ruthlessly modernized literary adaptations, it has superhot young stars, ultra-trendy New York locations and levels of sexuality the mid-Victorian father of 10 may well have appreciated - but never would have dared write about.

Filmed in its original British setting three times before, most memorably by David Lean in 1946, this time the tale of a poor orphan's social ascent takes place on Florida's Gulf Coast and in the glamorous Manhattan art world.

Ethan Hawke (``Reality Bites,'' ``Before Sunrise'') and Gwyneth Paltrow (``Emma,'' ``Seven'') play the romantically obsessed Finn (nee Pip) and his unattainable object of desire, Estella. Robert De Niro is the escaped convict, rechristened Ludwig from Dickens' Magwitch, and Anne Bancroft is the loony Ms. Dinsmoor, who does not come to quite as flaming an end as her model, Miss Havisham, does in the novel.

Director Alfonso Cuaron (``A Little Princess'') tosses in such hallmarks of modernity as a 10-minute Steadicam shot that flows through a chi-chi museum party, down a rainy New York street and in and out of an upscale sushi bar. And of course there's an extended sketching scene, in which a nude Estella poses for the feverishly drawing Finn.

Even though Paltrow's private parts remain strategically unexposed throughout the sequence, you can still imagine this new addition summoning Dickens' outraged spirit to reprimand the filmmakers like Marley's ghost.

Understanding Dickens

Of course, if Dickens' grave was not set a'spinning by screenwriter Mitch Glazer's last adaptation of his work, the ``Christmas Carol'' update ``Scrooged,'' the most popular English author of the 19th century will likely rest easy in Westminster Abbey through this, too.

``I had adapted Dickens once before in a completely different tone,'' Glazer says of the wacky Bill Murray comedy. ``But in both cases, the books are just so wonderful that the trick is to do them justice. Hopefully, you're faithful to the original in spirit and in theme.

``And when I was writing `Scrooged,' I did research into who Dickens was,'' Glazer continues. ``He was a commercial writer, he loved to sell books, he went on tour performing his work. So we're dealing with someone who, maybe given different times, might have written a scene like our modeling sequence. He wouldn't have been afraid of it, I know that. One of the ways I got through writing this was knowing that Dickens would have understood - or, at least, enjoyed the scene in the movie.''

If Glazer sounds like he was a bit reluctant to rethink what is generally considered Dickens' greatest book, he was. And he was not alone. Both director Cuaron and star Hawke said no when initially approached by Art Linson, the producer of ``Scrooged'' and ``The Untouchables,'' among others, with the project.

``I didn't want to do this film until I read the script and realized that it was not David Lean,'' says Cuaron, whose adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's ``Little Princess'' was faithful to the book's World War I-era setting. ``David Lean did the perfect straight adaptation of `Great Expectations'; it's a perfect masterpiece. I saw this as a real alteration of the material. We kept the core, the bones of the story, then we just played with all this freedom to create our own film.

``By doing that, we didn't feel Dickens was looking over our shoulders,'' Cuaron adds. ``We honor Dickens and we thank him, but it's not really like we were trying to make a Dickens adaptation in the contemporary world.''

Common denominator

``I'd read `Great Expectations' in high school - well, I probably read the Cliffs Notes,'' Hawke cracks. ``I thought Dickens was kind of an odd choice to do this kind of thing with. I loved the `Romeo + Juliet' thing; updating is often done with Shakespeare. But I was very skeptical of this, as an idea, at first.

``The thing that matters, though, is whether you have something relevant to do with it,'' Hawke continues. ``If there's something true about the story, it will probably translate into any time. The thing that always remains the same is people's relationships with each other, and human nature remains consistent. The point of this story that's most interesting to me is the theme of it, that you're not in control of your life and don't even know what forces are at work guiding it.

``And the relationship with Estella was interesting in the 19th century and is interesting now, to me,'' Hawke notes, then jokes: ``And it's probably, like, the only kind of relationship I've ever had! The whole notion of giving somebody else the power of your self-esteem - `I don't exist if she doesn't think I exist' - is timeless and fascinating.''

For Paltrow, who played a pitch-perfect Emma in the recent, period adaptation of Austen's early-19th-century English novel, a current incarnation of Dickens' tantalizing teaser required an entirely different approach.

``In a way, it's really liberating,'' she says. ``We're taking a few of Dickens' character arcs, moral lessons and dynamics between people and making it whatever we want. I felt much less bound to the responsibility of following the book than I did with `Emma.' I really felt like our poetic license was very vast, more than if we'd kept the same dialogue and made it in the same period as the book.

``I was excited to get to do something that was completely different,'' Paltrow adds, ``to play a woman who is cold, detached and manipulative, but is also very complicated. She's been raised by a woman who has encouraged her to be this way and she's in conflict with that. And it was really different for me to play someone who is that overtly sexual.''

Although, she admits, the days of posing naked were not exactly comfortable.

``When you're walking around with Band-Aids on your nipples all day, trying to act normal, it's bizarre,'' Paltrow reveals. ``But I love that scene. I think it's one of the really great love scenes where they never touch, but there's so much going on.''

That said, Paltrow is not immune to old-fashioned bashfulness.

``I told my father, `Daddy, you can go to the premiere, but I'm not going to sit next to you,' '' she says.

``Oh, it's pretty tame,'' Hawke says of the arty bit. ``My father will like it a lot, I think.''

Artful changes

Cuaron defends the overt sensuality of his film as more than just a commercial ploy.

``When you adapt something from the middle of the last century to late in this century, a lot of dynamics change,'' the director says. ``For instance, I don't think it's possible to speak about relationships nowadays without the dynamic of sex. One of the reasons I wanted to do the film was to focus the whole thing through that sensual dynamic.''

Similarly, screenwriter Glazer sought to identify a modern equivalent for Pip's class-driven determination to become a proper English gentleman. He came up with a pretty good substitute for our materialistic, star-gazing society: big bucks, high-profile success as a painter.

``It wasn't a stroke of genius, but I realized that now celebrity and fame have the same kind of power to inspire the same kind of dream in a young man,'' Glazer says. ``You can see him thinking he needs that in order to impress the woman he loves.''

Of course, Pip isn't exactly the right kind of name for a budding celebrity talent. But there was another reason for the many moniker changes between book and screen.

``In the same way that you couldn't name a character today Ebenezer Scrooge, there were certain names in `Great Expectations' that were so famous and so Dickensian that I couldn't bear typing them,'' Glazer confesses. ``Then it would've become intimidating, because I would have been constantly reminded who I was dealing with.''

Though purists may howl, Hollywood will likely keep re-engineering literary classics for at least one very good reason: No one writes nowadays like the great authors used to.

``Everybody is seeking great material, and the classics have proven to be universal stories,'' Cuaron reckons. ``People just tend to re-elaborate what has already worked and adapt it to their own sensibilities.''

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) MODERN `EXPECTATIONS'

Dickens' tale, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke, gets an MTV twist

(2) Ethan Hawke is Finn, the poor artist who gets lost in his expectations.

(3) The relationship between Estella (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Finn (Ethan Hawke) adds sensuality to the ``Great Expectations'' adaptation.

(4) `We kept the core, the bones of the story, then we just played with all this freedom to create our own film. By doing that, we didn't feel Dickens was looking over our shoulders.'

Alfonso Cuaron

director of ``Great Expectations''