Review of Tom Jones (1963) by Matheus C — 03 Aug 2011

This is one of those instances of a movie that must have been mind-blowing when it came out (as evidenced by its Best-Picture-Oscar win), but has become a little bit dated since then. Still, it's an enjoyable, spirited, and inventive comedy, and an interestingly postmodern retelling of an 18th century classic novel. It's also substantially better than director Tony Richardson's later adaptation of Fielding's Joseph Andrews.

The plot is a condensation of an 800-plus-page novel, so it ends up being kind of overstuffed and zany. The story concerns Tom Jones a young man of uncertain parentage who has been raised by a prominent squire in 18th century England, and his multiple amorous misadventures. He sleeps or at least flirts with so many different women in the movie that I honestly lost count at some point.

Albert Finney is charming as the perpetually beset Tom Jones, though his presence isn't really strong enough to completely hold together a movie whose tendency is to spin out of control. Susannah York is kind of bland as his love interest Sophie. The movie got three best supporting actress Oscar nominations, which makes it unique in Oscar history: one each for Edith Evans as Sophie's stuffy old aunt, one for Diane Cilento as bawd-next-door Molly, and one for Joyce Redman as an older woman of ill repute. All three performances are amusing, though they're not the sort of thing the Academy would ever think to nominate these days. Hugh Griffith also got an Oscar nomination as the drunken and repulsive Squire Western, and does a good job of being drunken and repulsive.

What really makes the movie of interest, I think, is the playfully postmodern way Tony Richardson put it together. It opens with a faux-silent-film sketch, complete with intertitles, of Jones's birth and discovery. Throughout, there are many instances of fourth-wall-breaking, the narrator being snarky, New-Wave-y tricks with sped-up film or freeze-frames and such, and just a generally irreverent feel. This must have been a real shock to the system in 1963, when you think of the other films that came out around that time, and it's got some of the techniques that Woody Allen used more elegantly to win another Best Picture Oscar 14 years later with Annie Hall. The movie easily could have been a boring costume drama, but it plays itself as an outrageous comedy. It's also notable that it insistently treats the 18th century as a rather dirty, nasty time - consider an extended, ridiculous sequence in which Tom and a woman flirt while eating all kinds of disgusting food. It's still extremely funny, and it contrasts sharply with our typical notion of period pieces as dry, clean films.

Still, as interesting as the movie is, it has become somewhat dated by now. The cinematography looks faded and dull. The ribaldry seems awfully tame by our post-The-Hangover standards. Some sequences and scenes drag on way too long and the movie occasionally becomes boring. Still, though, if you can mentally transport yourself back to 1963, when all of this was in fact outrageous and new, you will be able to appreciate Tom Jones for the fun movie that it is.