User Reviews

Tom Jones (Albert Finney) is a 18th century orphan who is adopted by an aristocrat but he lives his own life in mirth and freedom . The philander English lad has good heart and affinity for troubles and an eye for the ladies , confronting amorous and bawdy adventures . His true love is Sophie (Susannah York) , the daughter of a higher-class rich owner (Hugh Griffith).

The picture is a lavish rendition of a classic novel written by Henry Fielding with lots of entertainment and fun . It is plenty of satire , irony , comedy , tongue-in-cheek and amusement . Nice acting by Albert Finney ; however , he felt the lead role wasn't serious enough, and agreed to star only if he got a producing credit ; he later traded the credit for profit participation . Very good support cast gives splendid acting . Feature film debut for David Warner , Julian Glover and Lynn Redgrave . Lively and jolly soundtrack by John Addison , author of numerous classic scores of the English Free Cinema . The film was very well directed by Tony Richardson who in 1977 made an attempt to return with similar character -Joseph Andrews- but the freshness , inspiration and magic had gone . It is followed by a sequel -The bawdy adventures of Tom Jones- an exploitive extension directed by Cliff Owen with Arthur Lowe , Joan Collins and Trevor Howard . Tom Jones picture was undoubtedly the biggest year . The film obtained Academy Awards in 1963 to best film for United Artists , Director -Tony Richardson- , adapted screenplay -John Osborne- and original music -John Addison- and was nominated : Albert Finney , Hugh Griffith , Diane Cilento , Joyce Redman and Edith Evans by their robustly agreeable characterization . Well worth watching.

"Tom Jones" was in its day a revolutionary novel and the first of its kind, developing fully a polyphonic intrigue. There are many characters involved, who by destiny get mixed up with each other, like all 18th century novels it's outrageously extensive, but Tony Richardson and his team have successfully put it all together in a comprised cinematic form of some virtuosity. All the actors are outstanding, Albert Finney actually doesn't have to do much except be active, while the character who makes the greatest impression is the rumbustious Hugh Griffith as Squire Western, while his daughetr Susannah York never was lovelier than in this film. David Warner makes a weird debut as the one villainous character, you love to loathe him, Edith Evans is always more than true to her characters, and Joan Greenwood adds a great touch of sophisticated refinement as morally superior in all her immoralioty. Many scenes are classical, the revolting hunting scene, the dinner scene at the inn as a prelude to debauchery, the arrival in London through Hogarth streets of stinking misery - actually, the whole film has adopted something of the Hogarth style of a constant chaotic muddle. John Addison adds the final touch with his best music, for which he deserved and got an Oscar, but the film got and deserved a number of them.

Just two hundred years after Henry Fielding's novel appeared, the theatre-actor-turned-cinema-director Sir Tony Richardson rounded up a few Shakespearean-trained prodigees, got John Addison to compose hectic clavichord accompaniment a little in the style of Handel operas and set all this against lush photography to produce one of the most hilarious films of the last five hundred years. Fielding's novel – which is a most definite recommendation – rather cynically but good-humouredly exposed mid-eighteenth century British hypocrisy at its best and the landed gentry's obsession for fox-hunting at its worst. Richardson directed all this a bit like an elderly Sir Thomas Beecham ('the important thing is we all start and stop together; nobody notices what happens in between') raising his baton in front of the London Symphony Orchestra: the result in both cases is astounding. Richardson conducts his piece at a tremendous pace, Addison's clavichord tripping along gaily so as to keep up the illusion, and visual sequences such as a young trouserless Albert Finney escaping out of a window, shinning down a tree and running off into the nocturnal depths of a beech forest, all combine to keep you breathlessly awaiting the next scene. Susannah York is just delicious, with that innocent facial beauty that raises heartbeats, especially in the latter parts; and Angela Baddely as Mrs. Wilkins and Diane Cilento as Molly play some great scenes. And some of the great scenes are worth telling...... Tom and Mrs. Wilkins enjoy a good roast with fruit, eating lusciously and lascivously, eating each other up with their sparkling eyes: this scene is hugely delightful. The other great scene is the fox-hunt: this alone puts the whole film into a special category: brilliant film-making, almost comparable to the famous chariot race in Ben Hur........ I loved this film 37 years ago, and recently had the luck to see it again: having doubled my years, I was just as enthralled and enraptured as the first time. A splendid piece of art.

A thorough adaption of Henry Fielding's novel would require a mini-series which the work later got for television. But John Osborne's adapted screenplay for which he won an Oscar captures the right spirit of the ribald and rollicking novel of the mid eighteenth century in Great Britain.

It was one bawdy age, the dissolute courts of the first two kings named George set the tone for British society at the time. The title character played by Albert Finney is a young man of questionable origins, illegitimate no doubt who wants the love of young Susanah York, but will settle in a pinch for any and all of the other women who can't seem to help throwing themselves at him.

Finney as an infant makes his introduction into the world by being found on Squire Allworthy's bed, planted there as it were with no clue to his origins. The Squire played by George Devine thinks that servants Joyce Redmon and Jack McGowran are the responsible parties and he banishes them both. But keeps the infant to raise in his household.

Finney grows up to be a likable young lad who holds a great attraction for anyone of the female persuasion. Even the neighboring squire Hugh Griffith likes him, but not as a suitable husband for his daughter Ms. York.

The story in many ways sets the tone for the novels of Charles Dickens, many of which concerned young men like Tom Jones, David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, Young Pip in Great Expectations, who seek the meaning of their origins. But Fielding was writing for a public that had a lot less of a sense of decorum than Dickens's readers were. I doubt Charles Dickens could have gotten his work published if they had been as naughty as Fielding's.

Director Tony Richardson really captures the look of 18th century Great Britain, no doubt part of why he was named Best Director and Tom Jones awarded Best Picture of 1963. Albert Finney got an Oscar nomination, but lost to Sidney Poitier for Lillies of the Field. Hugh Griffith was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but he lost to Melvyn Douglas for Hud. It probably didn't help Griffith that he already had won one for Ben-Hur. And Diane Cilento as the town tart, Dame Edith Evans as Griffith's sister, and Joyce Redmon were all nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Three British women lost to a fourth however as Margaret Rutherford trundled up the middle with her performance in The VIPs.

Back in the day I remember seeing Hedda Hopper on Art Linkletter's House Party show and she was asked about her upcoming Oscar predictions. Hedda surprised me and everyone else by saying that she loved Tom Jones and said it was going to win everything it was nominated for. It didn't quite do that, but it certainly was successful in getting those gold statues. That the conservative Hedda Hopper would champion a film like Tom Jones was the surprise. But I guess Hedda knew times were a changing.

Now I suspect a lot more skin would be shown in a remake of this film. Yet Tom Jones will always have a lot of randy charm about the movie. It's one for the ages.

In 1963 two of the most important productions in the history of movie making were released. The first was: "Cleopatra" with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, a cast as long as the Manhattan telephone directory and a budget bigger than the combined egos of the stars. "Cleopatra" was a total disaster. It has no redeeming quality that I know of. It is therefore important for embodying in one film, nearly everything that you can do wrong in making a movie. It is a movie that you must see if you are ever to understand what a truly good film really is. The second was: "Tom Jones" with Albert Finney and Susannah York, shot with rented equipment and costumes on the streets of London with a supporting cast of brilliant British ensemble players and extras who stood-in just to get in a film. Tom Jones is simply one of the best motion pictures of all time, for my money, The Best from Literature.

John Osborne who wrote the screen play produced a marvelous vehicle, but the genius of "Tom Jones" is Tony Richardson. He moves the actors and the story about the screen with a bawdy grace and earthy gentility that paints action and raucous laughter and beauty across one another with an even hand. It is a glimpse of antiquity so close and real that we can nearly touch it, and it makes us want to. (Though to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure we'd care for the smell of it.)

"Tom Jones" is a low budget, low tech, high quality film that must win the award for the "Most with the Least." The photography is beautiful, not because it used a dozen half million dollar cameras, it is beautiful because it is good photography. The acting wins out, and casts of thousands would only serve to clutter the stage. See this film whenever, wherever and as often as you possibly can.

This was a great film in its time, and is still a great one today. Well-directed, well-acted, well-shot, great soundtrack, and based on a splendid literary vehicle.

It's frustrating to see so much uninformed voting and so many uninformed remarks on this otherwise wonderful site; I guess its inevitable since anyone can post anything. But I would like to point out that Tom Jones did not sleep with his mother as erroneously alleged, and that Albert Finney, 26 or 27 years old at the time of shooting this film, clearly did not look too old for his part.

I haven't read the book(s), but from the film it's obvious that Dickens was much indebted to Fielding, using his amazing invention as a convoluted plot model (and perhaps a character-naming model) for many of his works.

Go rent this film after seeing Finney in the currently playing Big Fish -- it's great to see him do so well in such very different films made in different millenia, nearly a full professional lifetime apart.

A fun and fresh screen adaption of British writer Henry Fielding's 18th Century novel of the same name, made at the threshold of the swinging (19)Sixties. Like the original story's French counterpart (Les Liaisons Dangereuses=Dangerous Liaisons), at its heart is a mannered metropolitan love triangle.

But before we arrive in the heart of London the stage is set amidst the lush green English countryside in Summer. Here we first meet the protagonist, Tom Jones, played by Albert Finney in his most youthful bloom, and his extended family representing every facet of post-Glorious Revolution England.

An incorrigible ne'er-do-well, Tom's genuine love for his neighbor Squire Alworthy's daughter Sophie (a very lovely Susannah York), takes him to the heart of fashionable London society in a series of comedic wrong-turns and misunderstandings. Here he becomes embroiled in the games of the jaded aristocrat Lady Bellaston played by Joan Greenwood. Greenwood steals the show as the original Mrs. Robinson and, through her machinations, Tom is led to the gallows. But at the last minute...

Throughout the movie is paced with a modern sense of realism, made effective by hand-held camera sequences and the quick editing of Antony Gibbs. Old-fashioned film techniques are used effectively with eye-to-the-camera realism, and convey an up-to-date feel. There are moments of beauty as well as comedy in this very satisfying entertainment. The cast is stellar with many familiar names--Hugh Griffith, Rachel Kempson, David Warner (in his first movie), the settings realistic, and the the musical score a perfect fit. A great time overall!

An interesting note, supposedly this is the last movie seen by John F. Kennedy (in a White House screening) before he was assassinated.

Tome Jones came out of the wonderful 60's when all the stuffy conventions of British theater, film and music were turned upside down. I first saw this film while stationed in Wiltshire in the Royal Air Force, and having grown up in the industrial West Riding of Yorkshire, my eyes had only recently been opened to the staggering beauty of the English countryside.

Tom Jones represented that unspoiled English countryside to me. I could smell the hay, the wildflowers and the livestock. Never mind that unless you were rich it was serf labor, I saw England through a wonderful fantasy of a film. The action never stopped. This movie was just hilarious from beginning to end. No glossing over the crude realities of country life - this was a period when the poor folk shared their hovels with the chickens and other small animals, when sex was raw, albeit punished on Sundays, and when the local gentry had their way with the wenches.

Rarely has there been such a belly laugh of a movie. Laugh until the tears roll down your face.

While my mother claims this is a "guy movie," I'm not a guy and find it one of the funniest, most charming movies ever made. The narration, music and just plain spunky tone of this movie makes it a unique piece -- you really DO have to see it to understand what it's all about! I highly recommend this movie -- as well as the book, which was published in 1749 but is just as funny today and highly readable, not "quaint" at all!

This is an adaptation of a large book, a Henry Fielding novel. In the early 1700's the growing middle class in Europe, especially in the British Empire, became literate. As an entertainment to get through the long hours of new leisure, novels flew from the printing presses. Tom Jones was a hit from the first. It was a bawdy tale with amusing detail. It is lucky that an experienced playwright like John Osborne was assigned the screenplay and double lucky that a fine director, Tony Richardson brought the tale to life.

Indeed, Richardson is a poet with the lush English countryside. Since much of the film depicts Tom Jones' amorous adventures in the grass with Molly Seagram, the peasant wench, on a skiff with the Squire's daughter, Sophie, in the tavern with Mrs.Wilkens, and in the suites of a countess, the bawdy adventures spin by as food shoots from the mouths of lovers. There are also duels, a misunderstanding about the linage of the Jones baby, and an unwanted suitor for the lovely Sophie, Susan York.

I saw this film as a teen in 1963 and it telegraphed a new sense of modernism and sexual freedom without pretense that is ironic since Fielding's story was hundreds of years old on the eve of the Beatles and the swinging London of the 60's.

"Tom Jones" is a movie adaptation of the classic Eighteenth century novel masterpiece of Henry Fielding made up by the greatest contemporary British playwriter John Osborne and directed by one of the main film directors of English Free Cinema, Tony Richardson. This film came at end of this golden period of the English Cinema in the sixties and it is the highest moment of this cinema. "Tom Jones" shows in the person of Tom Jones (the masterly Albert Finney) the point of view of the angry young man looking to the stupidity and the hypocrisies of the Eighteenth century society, which resembles our times. It is not at all just a funny film, even if some scenes are extremely funny and are some classics in the history of cinema, famous like the one in which Tom eating a rich supper with his woman is really looking like eating her with the eyes. "Tom Jones" is the adventurous hystory of a modern hero, who finally conquers his true love, after any kind of trouble. This is an highly cinematographic film, e.g. the movement of the camera gives itself the idea of happiness in the scenes of love in the country of Tom and Sophie (the beautiful and greatest Susannah York), the drama of the situation in which Tom risk to be hanged or the funniness in the bawdy scenes in the inn. In the beginning the film even outlines the beginning of the complex story using even the style of the silent cinema...Tom Jones/Albert Finney even also speaks directly to the public of the film reaching with his greatest originality an extreme level of funniness and pleasantness. The photography of the film resembles with its colours and views the landscapes of English painting of the Eighteenth century, like in Hogarth's pictures. The fox hunting scene is pictorially beautiful. The actors are all the best of the English theatre of that period and playing at their best, where theatre is so important and lively in England. Concluding, a film that gives the sense of the joy of living through the movie media at the highest level, it's a must to see even only this film, a masterpiece of the forgotten but greatest English film director, Tony Richardson. As Giancarlo Grazzini, the greatest Italian cinematographic critic of that time, wrote, it was the best film presented at the Film Festival of Venice, worthy of winning also the Golden Lion there and not just the Oscars!

So fun. I adore this thing. It's a marvelous costume comedy replete with hilar. It's beautiful to look at and delightful to know, a thing of beauty. In 18th century England a foundling baby is adopted by the landed gentleman who...hold on to your hat...finds him IN HIS BED! As the years go on he and the squire develop a real love for each other as if they were proper father and son, and that son is Tom Jones. As a brand new adult, through nefarious means, he is tossed out on his own. Thus begin his adventures. When he hits London he goes through love affairs, brawls and near misses. And all the girls fall for Tom Jones.

This was the period when French New Wave was supposedly reinventing cinema. Unfortunately, the French could only do so by citing Hollywood forms (mostly gangsters) and placing them in new contexts. That left lots of room for an intelligent Hollywood project to best them by exploiting itself. So much more could be done.

The rough form would be a contrast between the refined and the uncouth, between disciplined manner and unbridled lust, between old Hollywood presentation and the new. Thus, the uncouth merges with sex and the presentation used here.

That presentation form is at once hyperrealistic — hand-held verity, engagement with running horses, A specific film joke where Tom and Sophie follow each other riding animals, widely varying lighting schemes using found light, frequent direct dialog with the audience — and highly stylized "old" stuff: swordfights, wellworn plot closures, a typical love story but where the girl is halfway in the old and new worlds.

Make no mistake: the star of this is Suzanna York as our surrogate. Will we embrace this new manner of film-making, directly sensual and "real?" Of course we do, as much as no woman can refuse Tom

No serious watcher of film can omit this from their schedule. And it needs to be followed by "Barry Lyndon," and "Sex and Lucia."

Kubrick's project took this same story from the other side, the refined one. Its cinematography is lush and precise. But the project is one that contrasts nature (rather than raw sex acts) with foppish aristocracy (rather than general city society). But the intent is the same, to charm through images, just in Kubrick's case the images are aristocratic.

Medem's project is much more sophisticated, switching the dial so that the sex/repress, country/city, realistic/stylized image contrast is between experienced truth and written truth. But the same noir-like capricious fate is at work through copulation in Lucia as in Tom. The same idea as targeted woman, lovely desirable woman as the viewer's surrogate (and judge).

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Finney is terrific as Fielding's fun-loving, irresponsible hero, and is ably supported by a game cast. Richardson's direction is wonderfully inventive, using all kinds of cinematic tricks to make the story come alive. The asides to the viewers are hilarious, as in the blithe shrug Mrs. Waters gives to the audience when she is told that the man she bedded may be her long-lost son. The first half hour or so is rather uninvolving but things really get going with the exciting deer hunting scene. The sensual and funny dinner scene between Tom and Mrs. Waters is justly famous. The score by John Addison perfectly complements the lunacy.

"Tom Jones" is a Best Picture winner I unfairly mistook for one of these 'pretentious' and falsely sophisticated prestige movies indulging to the most old-fashioned forms of entertainment. My bias wasn't without a basis as the phenomenon was so typical of the 1960s especially the very year where the film competed with such distinguished illustrations of these symptoms as "Cleopatra" and "How the West Was Won". But with "Tom Jones", I embarked to a totally different ride, much to my greatest delight and let's use a not-too-fancy word: fun.

Yes, I had fun watching Tony Richardson's epic comedy. The film is a frantic, bawdy, irreverent, hilarious, self-conscious and entertaining costume drama and perhaps one of the most enjoyable I've ever seen recently, a non-stop series of gags and adventures with serious moments and charming romantic interlude that keep us anticipating imminent laughs, generally a little nod to the viewers comes at the right moment, just to tell us that this is not to be taken too seriously. It's all for the laughs just like a great cartoon, but it does take its intent to make us laugh seriously, and for that, I humbly take my hat off.

The film, adapted from the 18h novel written by Henry Fielding and adapted by John Osbourne, is the kind of material that might have suffered from a classic adaptation... unless your name is Stanley Kubrick. But Tom Jones is the antithesis of Barry Lyndon, he's the kind of larger-than-life character whose qualities call for an undetached directing in order to involve our empathy. And it starts in a rather promising way where he's described as a "bad hero" with many weaknesses, that, we're ready to believe. But when the narrator rather laconically adds that "But then, if Adam hadn't had such a weakness for apples, there would be nobody to tell Tom's story at all." The good old lad had already learned a few points of sympathy.

Indeed, swashbuckling and intrepid heroes can get rapidly boring so you've got to provide the character a little extra edge, a sense of self-awareness that commands the viewer to believe in the character and Tony Richardson has more than a sleeve in his tricks to make that work, starting with the first scene. Richardson makes a rather strategic choice by setting the tone of zany unpredictability before the opening credits start. Imagine how you can establish that your main character is a baseborn baby left in the bed of the rich Squire Allworthy, melodrama would be ridiculous but Richardson treats it like some old silent comedy with a silly piano theme and people acting like in some Vaudeville acts. It's perfect.

Richardson already shows that his priority in the film is the viewer and makes a film that look like a collection of sequences that work like these Benny Hill skits, all in color, fast-motion and a period piece of music, inspiring many moments from Woody Allen's "Love and Death". "Tom Jones" is perhaps the first movie that understood the secret appeal of costume dramas, movies set in at the crossroads between the contemporary world and the colorful and somewhat exotic ancient times, a period that can afford to be presented with modern visuals and tones without looking too incongruous. They are disconcerting to the eyes, but all the irises in the films, the fourth-wall breaking moments, the fast motions and all these madcap chases were inspired takes as the director relieved the material from its remains of pompousness.

And that semi-parodic tone, going as far as showing a character putting his cap on the lens of a camera, carries the same effect than what the narrator says about drinking "It is not true that drink alters a man's character. It may reveal it more fully." The film embraces with a charming and appealing confidence its material, without any holds barred, the more liberties and artistic licenses it takes, the more it frees itself from conventions that would have dated it considerably. The film remains incredibly modern and is only betrayed by the texture of the picture and of course a casting that showcases many great British talents of the time: Hugh Griffith always got a good word for a good laugh and can also do so with a simple gesture such as mimicking a goat or throwing a glass of wine on his bulldog, Susannah York is once again a perfect mix of juvenile beauty and maturity in acting, David Warmer makes a fine debut as the sly and hypocritically virtuous rival Blifil, and naturally you have the trio of Oscar-nominated actresses for Best Supporting Role; Joyce Reman as the luscious Mr. Waters, Edith Evans as the pushy and holier-than-thou aunt and Diane Cileto as the amoral Molly.

Naturally, the performance that carries the film is Albert Finney who also reinvents the role of the hero by looking so dashingly handsome and yet with his stocky frame, broad shoulders and slightly busted nose has the look of a pugnacious cockney you'd love to share a few pints with. Finney is complete, he manages to be poetic, tough, sensitive and romantic and always present when the call of heroism and bravery is made. What a great performance from the actor who had just left us a few months ago. His scene with Mrs. Evans in the inn remains one of the most memorable and sensual food eating moments, a school-case of suggestion in a time where everything relies on obsessive nudity (hear, hear, Kechiche!) there is so much eroticism and lust in this iconic moment that one should even question the need of graphic sex in movies.

The film is often remembered and parodied for that scene specifically, which is more than many movies can take pride from but that doesn't take anything from the other moments as "Tom Jones" is great from beginning to end, and perhaps one of the most deserving Best Picture winners of the 1960s, and beyond.

I absolutely adore this film. It's a irreverent bawdy 60's comedy in disguise as a period piece. A film that is self-aware enough to undermine its own conventions-notice how there are handheld shots in the silent opening-for the good of the joke. A film that is vicious social satire but takes care to root its visuals in authentic construction and realistic grim. The adventures of Jones is irony defined. I simply love the way the modern cinematic techniques-wipes, breaking the 4th wall, the French new Wave influences, etc.-all play off the period story of a lovable foundling.

And lovable is exactly what Jones is. Finney is hysterical, roguish and pitch perfect in the title role. Finney is so good you almost also look the other fine acting in this film.Griffith is simple the perfect boorish drunkard and every single line out of his mouth is comedy gold. There's a reason why this film is the only one in history to receive 3 supporting actress nominations.

The screenplay, especially the use of the voice over for commentary and to keep the plot moving, is a masterwork of economic storytelling. A lot of the book, it is over 800 pages+, is removed completely, a lot more is truncated and cut down, and still more is made a lot simpler. But for all that the film really captures the spirit of the novel and the story feels like an abridge version not a different version. It also helps that there dozens of great lines in this film.

I really don't know why this has such a low rating on here. It's has been copied a lot but it's still fresh, funny and fun.

The writer of 18th Century England, especially the novelists, were a lot more free to express themselves as those a century later. I consider the Victorian era to be the greatest for literature, but Fielding, Smollett, Swift and his ilk had a whole host of possibilities. I think this is Fielding's greatest novel. Albert Finley plays the young and randy Tom in a picaresque novel, with adventures every step of the way. He encounters loose women, angry husbands, great possibilities and bitter disappointments. But he keeps his chin up along the way and bounces from experience to experience. He is always optimistic and charming. Wonderful performances in a time when the world created a challenge for all.

People were excited about Tom Jones in 1963. I read in an archived paper that it was considered the next Citizen Kane. Somehow someway that translated to 4 Oscars, including Best Picture, where it's now considered the weakest winner outside of Crash since the 50s. Probably even weaker than Driving Miss Daisy. It's a bizarre blend of period costume drama and screwball comedy, and neither parts work. It's really all over the place, and I'll admit to not being able to follow the story besides the broad strokes. There's little to find engaging. It's so unbelievably rough around the edges, so horribly shot and overlaboured in the editing. No, those scenes don't need speeding up. That doesn't make it funny. That makes it cheap. Maybe it was an innovator at the time, but it innovated the worst ideas. Albert Finney does have charm, but the film savours none of it. The acting from the ensemble spare a few is solid, but the filmmaking is too weak for them to steal the show. I'll give it credit that the score is Oscar- worthy and is the only thing that efficiently sets the tone. Poor show on Richardson and the Academy's behalf.

5/10

I understand why this movie is called a classic. The camera work is dazzling and fresh, sweeping away all the stodginess of a period picture. The cast is attractive, cheerful, and plainly having the time of their lives. The direction makes it easy to laugh along and get caught up in the sheer sexual charisma of Tom Jones' personality.

But personally, as an English major who really treasured the book, I find that this movie is not all it's cracked up to be. It plays up all of Tom's worst qualities -- his lustfulness, the impulsive and almost infantile side of his personality -- and plays down all of his loyalty, courage, and higher feelings. This movie was "influential" for the rest of the Sixties, and in all the wrong ways.

Tom was the first "anti-hero" in Sixties film, a guy who is good looking and sexy but not especially brave or clever or even kind. Note again that this was NOT Fielding's intent. In the novel, he says explicitly that Tom "is as much a Hercules as an Adonis" meaning that he is a real hero, who fights for right, not just a lover boy. But this movie plays Tom's fist fight scenes strictly for laughs, as if to say courage and manhood are "out" and getting by on sheer charm is "in." Not to carry it too far, but you can draw a straight line from this vision of Tom Jones to the increasingly repulsive "anti-heroes" who followed later in the decade. They range from the ultra-violent Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE to the cowardly Indian warrior in LITTLE BIG MAN to the criminal Michael in THE GODFATHER.

What's missing from the film -- but not the book -- is any sense that Tom really loves Sophia, or that he learns from his adventures and becomes more worthy, more manly, at the end. The book takes the idea of choice and responsibility seriously, the movie just laughs it off. Not surprisingly, Tom's love affair with Lady Bellaston comes off differently as well. Casting the exquisite and sultry Joan Greenwood as Lady Bellaston was delightful, but wrong. In the book she is a fat, dumpy old hag who buys Tom and tries to corrupt him. In the movie she is a stunning older swinger who indulges him just for the fun of it. Sure it's sexy to watch -- really sexy. But what does it prove? Nothing. Tom doesn't resist temptation, he isn't punished, and he doesn't grow. It's the infantile approach that was to become all to popular during the "idealistic" sixties.

If you cannot enjoy this movie, you have no relish for life and comedy and the human spirit. Albert Finney and Suzannah York are a delightful couple as Tom and his one love Sophie. One of the great things about the movie is the comments to the audience by Tom. The technique is not new (see The Road Movies), but it is used to great comic effect. And the voice-over narrator enhances all the action. If you don't know the story, Tom Jones is about a 'bastard' boy trying to make his way in the 1700's world of England. The story is delightful through, with the requisite villains, 'fallen' and lusty women, sword fights and some amazing coincidences. Everything about the movie is delightful, with great production values and an excellent cast. If you haven't seen this movie, please do so. I don't see how you can not enjoy it from beginning to end.

TOM JONES may not be the worst movie to take home the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture, but it certainly is in the running for being the most ineptly directed. Tiresomely clumsy and terminally long-winded, this so-called rollicking comedy barely merits a legitimate smile, let alone any laugh-out-loud moments of glee. Under Tony Richardson's amateurish direction, the film suffers from having little sense of comic timing, a lack of the astute use of editing or camera placement or even the slightest hint that the famed director had ever been behind a camera before.

It is easy to see what Richardson was going for; he wanted to cut the historical epic as a genre down to size. The austere, pretentious, pompous Hollywood-style history lessons that were once a staple -- and a symbol of what in Hollywood passed for class -- were often humorless and self-aware of just how "important" they were. With actors giving solemn, coldly pious performances, the characters they played were placed on pedestals as being morally and intellectually superior to the commoners who served them -- and who sat in the audience watching. TOM JONES' purpose -- if indeed it has a purpose -- is to show that the nobility was no better than the peasant class -- other than maybe having lived in a slightly better quality of squalor.

So be it -- but by the same token, big deal! The tendency of the movies to alternately worship and mock the rich and powerful has always been a given. There isn't much here that hadn't already been made fun of before (and better) in the period parodies made by Danny Kaye or Bob Hope. Or for that matter, the Three Stooges. The best you can give TOM JONES credit for is being a forerunner of the snob-and-slob comedies of later generations; move the story to contemporary Beverly Hills and cast some refugee from "Saturday Night Live" in the Jones part and you'll have a modern day CADDYSHACK. I mean is Hugh Griffith's over-the-top vulgar nobleman really much different from the below-the-belt nouveau riche vulgarians that made up Rodney Dangerfield's film career?

The simple-minded attack on the upper class is nothing new or different, but that wouldn't matter if the film itself were, well, funny. It's story is the standard picaresque adventures of a young rogue's life among his social betters -- jazzed up with all the cheap sexual innuendoes, mistaken identities and misunderstandings that farce requires. For the most part, the film seems to be a desperate attempt to blend the gritty realism of the various European "new waves" with the orchestrated anarchy of the Marx Bros. -- while not succeeding at doing justice to either. It is like a rough cut made up of poorly chosen outtakes; instead of a work of slick, carefully crafted chaos, it is comprised of one poorly staged scene after another, a soundtrack of disconnected voices and a droning narration that always seems to be describing missing material. Impressed with Richardson's use of silent movie gimmicks (title cards, speeded up action, iris fade outs, etc.), the film critics of the time lavished the film with praise for being new and fresh -- by using tricks that even then were old and cliché!

The cast of distinguished British stage notables tend to mug for the camera as if they were in a Jerry Lewis movie. Even Albert Finney in the title role fails to give any real performance, his character is jerked from scene to scene by circumstance rather than by dramatic motivation. Indeed, lovingly photographed as though he were in a spread for a fashion magazine, Finney has never looked so unrelentingly handsome and dashing -- and, yet, been so vacuously lacking in personality. Amoral and callow, there is little reason to care for Jones' fate other than the fact that he is so gosh-darn pretty.

Even granting that 1963 was a remarkably weak year for movies, TOM JONES' winning of the Oscar (among several other prestigious awards) is a puzzlement. These things rarely go to comedies, unless it is perceived that they somehow represent something groundbreaking (like ANNIE HALL or AMERlCAN BEAUTY). Yet, even if TOM JONES was seen as some sort of bold departure from the norm, it didn't stop the Academy from soon going back to form and giving their top prize to such stiff, shallow and self-important historical epics as A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, CHARIOTS OF FIRE, GANDHI, THE LAST EMPEROR, THE ENGLlSH PATIENT, BRAVEHEART and GLADIATOR -- all of which carry at least some glimmer of high-tone British superiority. So I suppose that even the thinnest patina of British class somehow, in their eyes, raised this low-brow mess to the level of high-brow social commentary. Or worse, art.

In 1963 Tony Richardson John Osbourne and a marvellous cast showed audiences a revolutionary approach to filming period drama. Using up date techniques but maxing authenticity too, it still looks fresh and vibrant almost 60 years later. It's a bawdy witty and engaging romp, wonderful entertainment, and it's easy to see how influential it has been. It does take a little while to get going though and there are a few scenes early on that I didn't think worked 100%, but all in all it's a wonderful romp, and a great British classic.

TOM JONES was an irreverent, subversive delight in its day, a smash hit from those misty long-ago days when a period picture could be a worldwide sensation AND a critical darling. Its charm has not worn off. I enjoyed the whole thing, particularly its cinematic playfulness and aping of silent era technique (the intertitles in the opening, the undercranked sequences, the use of iris shots, etc.). After years of staid, stately presentations of the past, TOM JONES must have come off like it was from another planet.

To be honest, even now that playfulness remains potent. I can't think of any mainstream movie that pushes its cleverness beyond boring ass irony and snarky characters commenting on tropes.

Anyway, watch TOM JONES.

The fact that this won four Oscars including best picture tells you how Hollywood was well on its way down the dumper, which was fully flushed down the drain about five years after this trash came out. A big part of the reason this was given such prestigious honors was it dared "push the envelope." Soon, the Hollywood would be "free" to give us about all the profanity, nudity and sex people would want. This movie - and Best Picture Award - helped set the stage. (Didn't "Charade" come out in 1963? That movie lost out to this????!)

In this movie, the young man (Albert Finney) who screws anything that moves is the good guy while the uptight, nasty bad guy is, of course, the religious guy. How many times have we seen this bias?

Finney was so young looking, I didn't recognize him when I watched this film in the 90s, about 30 years after seeing it in the theater when it came out. Albert's voice didn't even sound the same.

This movie was supposed to be hilarious. It wasn't.