BEFORE: Another Best Picture Oscar winner tonight - raising my total to 62 out of 84. I think that's quite respectable, and I'll try to pick up a few more during TCM's February programming. This should be the year that I finally watch "Gone With the Wind" and "Gandhi", or at least put them on the list.
Like "Mutiny on the Bounty", this is based on a novel set in 18th century London (I think), and Hugh Griffith carries over from "Mutiny on the Bounty". He was Britain's 2nd most famous bug-eyed comic actor, after Marty Feldman.
THE PLOT: Tom Jones, the adopted son of a British country squire, is a love-'em-and-leave-'em lady charmer who goes blithely from bed to bed, while managing to get into other mischief.
AFTER: Well, if Fletcher Christian was played as an upper-class twit in last night's film, this film is full of upper-class twits. Both kinds, the prim and proper types, and those that indulge all of their wanton desires for food, drink and sex.
This is simultaneously both high literature and bedroom farce - and perhaps that's why it feels so disjointed, because a story really can't be both. An author has to choose one, comedy or tragedy. Tom Jones is a tragic figure, essentially abandoned at birth and adopted by a squire, he's well-off but is forced to leave home and travel with no funds. But our tragic hero is placed in a series of comic misadventures. He loves his intended, Sophie, but fools around with nearly every woman he meets.
Right there, we've got a double-standard. A woman of easy virtue is branded a "hussy" or "slut" and if she should make the mistake of becoming an unwed mother, she's branded for good. But it's OK for a man of the time (even a married one) to sleep around with very few repercussions, other than the occasional bastard child. Sophie is expected to remain true to Tom and not take on any suitors, yet Tom is, shall we say, a lot freer with his emotions.
It's hard for me to fathom this film deserving the Best Picture Oscar (must've been a slow year - yep, it beat out "Cleopatra" and "How the West Was Won"), when it's bawdier than even "Lady Chatterley's Lover". Perhaps it's a sign of the sexual revolution of the 1960's - a decade whose Oscar winners began with "The Apartment" and ended with "Midnight Cowboy". But I see this film as something of the link between stuffy British literature and low ribald comedy - somewhere between "Fanny Hill" and "Benny Hill", if you will.
Don't get me wrong, I love corsets and cleavage as much as the next fellow - and enjoyed the attractive women on "Benny Hill" when I was a young teen. In fact, all of that show's famous sped-up chase scenes, where a crowd of people (usually including a few women in lingerie) would chase Mr. Hill around, to the tune of "Yakety Sax" probably owe a debt to this film, which features one such sped-up chase through the bedrooms of the Upton Inn, though accompanied by harpsichord instead of saxophone.
There are also plenty of farcical coincidences, people bumping into each other and recognizing them, despite meeting them only once, briefly, 20 years ago. And that sort of hearkens back to "Les Miserables", which employed some of the same storytelling techniques. But it also strains the boundaries of credulity - London was a town of hundreds of thousands of people, yet the same 5 or 6 keep bumping into each other. I'm not really buying it.
And geez Louise, what did people do for thousands of years, before DNA testing was invented? They knew that people couldn't remain faithful, and just assumed parentage because people kind of looked like their fathers? That kind of uncertainty would only be a problem if there was some kind of feudal inheritance system based on patriarchy. Oh, wait... Did poor people who hated their station just daydream that they were really the rightful Earl of Blankenship or something? And what about the Earl himself, always wondering about how much his father played around, wondering if his title was going to be challenged someday, or that he'd find out he married his half-sister. It sounds like utter madness.
Starring Albert Finney (last seen in "Miller's Crossing"), Susannah York (last seen in "The Lion in Winter" - damn, I wish I'd realized that sooner), George Devine, David Warner (last seen in "The French Lieutenant's Woman"), Joyce Redman.
RATING: 4 out of 10 hunting dogs
No comments:
Post a Comment