The Oscar Project #36: Tom Jones (1963)

by Chris Marshall:

What a strange movie. For a brief moment, I thought about letting those four words be the entirety of the post, but I’m too stubborn about the 500 word minimum. That being said, I want the record to show that that was the essence of my reaction after watching Tom Jones.

Much to my disappointment, it was not a movie about the Welsh-singer-turned-Las-Vegas-sensation Tom Jones, but rather an adaptation of Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. I checked out the novel’s Wikipedia page to see if I could find anything interesting about it, but it turns out the Wiki page is as long as the novel itself, so I’m just going to assume it’s a fairly faithful adaptation.

Then again, I’m not sure what the novelistic equivalent of a freeze frame is. I’m not sure they worked to achieve any greater purpose, but I will give credit to the director, Tony Richardson, for being stylistically innovative. Tom Jones is a like a different species from any of the previous Best Picture winners.

First of all, the opening credit sequence is done in the style of a silent film, and when it progresses to the actual movie, it continues to be unconventional. Everything on screen freezes while the narrator talks. Albert Finney breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly into the camera. And it’s all just so overwhelmingly British.

I occasionally found myself a little confused by the story, a problem I mostly attribute to how distracted I was by Finney’s uncanny resemblance to Donald Trump. This distraction was compounded when I thought about how likeable Tom Jones is, which is about the last characteristic I would ever use to describe Trump.

Basically, Tom Jones is a foundling, an abandoned child, who lives with a wealthy family in 18^th century London. He falls in love with Sophie (played by Susannah York), the daughter of his adoptive family, but because of his illegitimate beginnings, he is told that he can’t marry her. Meanwhile, Sophie’s parents are forcing her to marry the tastefully-named but not tastefully-mannered Blifil. Sensing a threat in Tom, Blifil convinces the father that Tom is not to be trusted. The father gives Tom some money and kicks him out of his home.

"Not THAT Jones, the OTHER Jones!"

At this point, Tom gets into a series of adventures and misadventures, and he pines for Sophie the whole time. Along the way, he meets some soldiers, one of whom is played by Julian Glover, who I know as Walter Donovan from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and others may know as General Veers from Empire Strikes Back. I’m more of an Indiana Jones guy myself, and because I wasn’t particularly interested in the movie anymore by then, I tried to picture him saying Walter Donovan’s lines instead of his own. I think it was an improvement.

Tom Jones, if nothing else, stands out from the crowd. Whether it’s in a positive or negative way I leave up to you. This is a comedy, but I found myself not understanding many of the jokes; either that, or it just wasn’t funny. On the occasions I did laugh, it was almost always due to Finney’s performance, which was incredibly charming, despite the rest of the film.

There was some fairly stiff competition in the Best Picture race in 1963, so I’m not quite sure why Tom Jones in particular was picked. All the other four nominees were fairly well known: Cleopatra, Lilies of the Field, How the West Was Won, and America, America. In addition to those movies, a couple of foreign films called 8 ½ and Knife in the Water were released. I’m not naïve enough to think the Academy was going to give the award to Fellini, but I’m willing to say that both of those films are better than Tom Jones.

Am I the only one who sees Donald Trump?

Four of the 10 Best Picture winners in the 1960s were British productions, so perhaps that had something to do with it. It’s hard to say. But I think it’s more likely that the voters saw Tom Jones and were impressed that Tony Richardson, who also won Best Director, was so willing to throw caution to the wind. They saw something different, and they decided it was the best, even if much of it didn’t work at all. I will give them credit for that; there’s nothing “safe” about this pick.

And of course, the Academy responded to this decision by immediately going back to big budget American musical productions. I’m ok with that. Tom Jones was too weird to live and too rare to die.