Due to some difficulty I had in getting my hands on Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones, I was unable to post this review last week as promised. Sorry about that. As usual, to vote for the next Reviews By Request selection, see the poll at the end of this review.
In a survey of the Oscar winners for Best Picture, Tony Richardson’s 1963 film Tom Jones is one of the more intriguing titles. Sure, it’s an adaptation of the classic novel by Henry Fielding, but this is hardly the kind of reverent literary epic that usually gets the Academy to take notice. But beyond its bawdy comedy, it’s also a stylistic departure from the usual period pieces, with Richardson employing the techniques of the French New Wave to take the wind out of the wigs-and-horses period setting. On paper, Tom Jones is just the kind of movie that ought to be recognized more often by the Academy- a film that boldly tweaks cinematic convention in an attempt to entertain audiences in a unique way. But the trouble with judging a movie on paper is that sooner or later one must actually see it to get the whole story, and in the case of Tom Jones, the whole story is that it doesn’t live up to its potential.
I knew I was in for a long sit during the opening sequence, in which Richardson establishes the circumstances of Tom’s birth. Rather than portraying it in a more conventional way- say, through narration or montage- Richardson turns it into a silent movie, complete with intertitles. Now, I’m sure most of you would agree that this is an interesting and unexpected twist on the usual style of the genre. However, with the actors’ hyper-exaggerated mannerisms and John Addison’s manic harpsichord score, the scene comes off more cutesy than bold. By the time the opening titles have hit the screen, Richardson has already dug himself into a hole that he never manages to escape.
Richardson drops the silent-movie pastiche after the opening credits, thankfully, but he still has plenty of tricks up his sleeve- jump cuts, cheeky narration, and more. In one of the more glaringly out-of-place bits, there’s a scene in which the adult Tom (Albert Finney) evades a jealous husband in which Richardson speeds up the film like an old slapstick comedy (think the Keystone Kops). There’s also a handful of moments in which Finney breaks the fourth wall, as when he asks the audience for support when a female innkeeper accuses him of trying to weasel his way out of paying his bill. It takes an inspired film to pull off moments like these, and Tom Jones is not that movie.
It’s a shame, because Finney cuts a fine figure as Tom. At its heart, this is the story about a man who’s torn between his good nature and his base impulses, which lead him into trouble. Tom’s loyalty invites others to take advantage of him, and his dashing good looks bring him the kind of female attention he would be wise to avoid.
Despite the film’s period trappings, Tom bears more than a passing resemblance to Arthur Seaton, Finney’s breakthrough role in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, who was unable to reconcile his desires to have fun with his need to do right by his single-mother girlfriend. With these two films, Finney announced to the world that he was a major actor, and he effortlessly holds his own here opposite an impressive cast, including Susannah York, Hugh Griffith, Edith Evans, Joyce Redman (with whom he shares the film’s most famous scene), and the great Joan Greenwood, who had one of the great voices in cinema.
One key directorial decision that I appreciated was Richardson’s unwillingness to lend the usual glamour to his period setting. Most historical and literary films tend to be showcases for the art directors and costume designers, who spare no expense in re-creating the trappings of period luxury. By contrast, Richardson’s portrayal of country gentility in the early 1700s is hardly luxurious. Meals consist of copious amounts of wine and freshly-killed meat eaten with the hands, and interiors are dusty and dark, lit only by a handful of candles. Practically the only form of entertainment was the hunt, which Richardson portrays as scores of dogs and men on horseback pursuing a stag- hardly very sporting. To accentuate the less charming aspects of this world, Richardson and cinematographer Walter Lassally shoot the film in anemic-looking tones and with a mostly handheld camera. When it comes to epic splendor, Gone With the Wind this isn’t.
Richardson’s de-glamorization of his period setting is such a refreshing change of pace from what one normally expects from a movie of this kind that it seems a shame that he feels the need to goose it with his arsenal of New Wave tricks. Unlike most Oscar-winning films, which seem to have little on their minds besides taking home rafts filled with awards, Tom Jones is rather more ambitious- in the end, too ambitious to be successful. In the end, the film must be labeled a noble failure, and although one can’t help but admire Richardson’s desire to step outside the well-trod path for literary adaptations, that doesn’t mean I look forward to seeing Tom Jones again anytime in the near future.
Now that Oscar season is over, we can get back to some more diverse and, uh, interesting choices for Reviews By Request. As promised, we’ll kick off things with a poll devoted to reader requests. So, which of these will it be? A seventies SF thriller from the director of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three? A documentary about two children who were switched at birth? An infamous horror film about evil children? A thriller starring Alain Delon? Or will it be the long-shelved seventies exploitation title that was immortalized by Patton Oswalt? It’s your call, folks:
As usual, the comments section is open, particularly for those who would like to suggest future titles for consideration. See you in two weeks!