It all begins with tiny footsteps echoing off the cobblestones in the dark streets of London. J. Stuart Blackton turns his camera to the most hidden corners of Charles Dickens’s world, capturing a time when children, their fingers trembling with hunger, ran breathlessly through the streets. Little Oliver, who has run away from the orphanage and found himself among street gangs, steps not into a world of glittering ballrooms, but into one of pickpockets and shadowy inns. This is a stage of drama where mercy is nowhere to be found, and every street corner brings a new struggle for survival. The shadows stretching beneath the yellow glow of streetlamps continue to silently tell a centuries-old tale of poverty. Every new step taken on these streets, woven with misery, leaves the viewer face to face with a harsh reality.