Cinema
Tom Jones
Tony Richardson · 1963
Synopsis
The film opens in the manner of a silent film, intertitles included. The squire Allworthy returns home and finds a newborn baby in his bed. Suspicion falls on his servant, Jenny Jones, and on the village barber, Partridge, and he drives them both away; he decides to keep the child, names him Tom Jones and raises him as his own son. Grown into a young man, Tom courts Sophie Western, the daughter of a neighbour, without giving up the others.
Context
The film is drawn from the novel by Henry Fielding published in 1749, and the screenplay is by John Osborne, whose 1956 play had supplied the label for the angry young men. It transposes the eighteenth century's freedom into devices borrowed from the French New Wave: an opening played as in the silent era, addresses to the viewer, freeze frames, and a character who covers the lens with his hat. It won four Oscars from ten nominations, and three of the actresses nominated for the supporting role came from it. Its director did not like it: he judged it unfinished and botched, said he gritted his teeth when people congratulated him on it, and twenty-six years later produced a cut seven minutes shorter.
Who it is for
Two hours eight, in English with subtitles or in a French version. A narrator's voice takes the place of the commentary the novelist made himself.
Prizes and reception
Best Picture at the Oscars, at the British awards and at the Golden Globes, when a major London daily judged it incapable of providing a moment of pleasure.
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