Tom Jones
Tony Richardson (1963)
My Penguin copy of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones runs to 840 pages (inclusive of dedication and contents, exclusive of notes). Tony Richardson’s film of the book, with a script by John Osborne, runs 128 minutes. The rate of compression can therefore be expressed as around six-and-a-half pages per minute of screen time and the manifold good feelings generated by Richardson’s Tom Jones include gratitude and relief that it isn’t a marathon. The film obviously aims to confound expectations that a costume drama adapted from a classic British novel, regardless of what kind of classic novel, is bound to be somehow dignified: Richardson transmits the vigorous humour of the original through the use of screen comedy tropes – a silent-movie pastiche prologue, later sequences of speeded-up action, zany music (by John Addison) throughout. In view of what it set out to do more than half a century ago, Tom Jones has aged surprisingly well. The scale and dynamism of set-piece sequences like the deer hunt are exciting – and, at this distance in time, an impressive pre-CGI achievement. (The cinematography is by Walter Lassally and the editing by Antony Gibbs.) There’s an inevitable loss of kinetic momentum in the last third of the film, when the action switches from country to town – or, at least, when the camera moves from teeming, chaotic London streets to inside private houses. But interest in the story and the people in it, whether they’re in a farmyard or at a masked ball, doesn’t flag – nor does the viewer’s spirits. All human life seems to be here, and relatively little death.
The irony and self-awareness of the voiceover narration (by Micheál Mac Liammóir) and the protagonist’s asides to camera also help give Tom Jones a modern feel but Tony Richardson rations them sensibly: the devices never threaten to distance the audience from what’s going on. Richardson assembled a remarkable cast: the acting is, for the most part, exuberantly histrionic and hugely enjoyable. I’d recorded the film from television; by coincidence, Sally and I watched it immediately after the first episode of the BBC’s current adaptation of Decline and Fall. There are difficulties presenting Evelyn Waugh’s 1928 comic novel to a 2017 audience – corporal punishment, pederasty and racism are all good for laughs – but you don’t expect the actors to be part of the problem. Yet, on the evidence of the opener, Stephen Graham (as Philbrick) is the only one to achieve a sustained characterisation; even Douglas Hodge (Captain Grimes) seems to be doing bits of funny business, with hit-and-miss results. This will sound old-fogeyish but I can’t help thinking it’s the stage-trained talents of many of the Tom Jones cast – as well as their extraordinary looks, which Tony Richardson exploits expertly – that keep them fully and securely in character, as well as making them larger than life. The bickering of Hugh Griffith (as the emphatically unreconstructed Squire Western) and Edith Evans (his clumsily interfering townie sister) is a special highlight but the actors seem right regardless of their vintage. Peter Bull (Thwackum), Avis Bunnage (the keeper of the Upton Inn), Diane Cilento (Molly Seagrim), George A Cooper (Fitzpatrick), Jack MacGowran (Partridge), John Moffatt (Square), Patsy Rowlands (Sophia Western’s maid Honour), David Warner (in his screen debut as the creep Blifil) – singling out this group for praise gives some idea of the age range. The cast also includes, among many others, Julian Glover, Joan Greenwood, Rachel Kempson, Rosalind Knight and David Tomlinson.
George Devine is a fine, nuanced Squire Allworthy and the degree of zest Richardson seems to have required from all concerned lifts Susannah York to an unusually vivid level: she’s very appealing as Sophia Western. Holding it all together in the title role is a twenty-seven-year-old Albert Finney. The foundling Tom Jones is assumed to be ‘base-born’ but he’s played by an aristocrat among actors. Finney’s Tom has a robust, open charm and unbelievable wit. He combines abundant physical energy and endless comic invention. You believe in him equally as the young man genuinely in love with Squire Western’s daughter and as the try-anything hedonist. You’re pleased the story ends happily for him and Sophia but you don’t forget the film’s deservedly most famous sequence – the aphrodisiac dinner at the Upton Inn shared by Tom and Mrs Waters (excellent Joyce Redman). He saves her honour in the afternoon and they sleep together that night.
4 April 2017