TOM JONES!

Crass, zany and bawdy! This film was a slow burn of humor and satisfaction. Albert Finney plays the titular character in the 1964 Oscar-winning best picture, Tom Jones.

This British film is an adaptation of the 1749 novel, “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling”, and is set in the same period. A narrator shares passages from the original texts throughout the film. The story follows the trials and tribulations of a bastard child taken in and raised by a family of means. That bastard child grows up to be an extremely lovable rascal, both to the other characters around him, and to the audience.

The movie employs a plethora of what one could call techniques or gimmicks as it lays out the full story. It opens with a silent film style of setting things up with title cards and no dialogue. It later employs freeze frames, fast forward motion and sound, time lapsed still frames, and breaking of the 4th wall. The latter is always done as a way of acknowledging the audience, but never actually engaging them… until the final time!

There is some fantastic camera work, with a hunting scene near the beginning of the film being a particular standout. It contains a large gathering of hunters on horseback, a large pack of hunting dogs, and a single small deer as the prey. As the viewer, you are alternately looking from above and then immersed right in the action. The scene lasts almost 7 minutes and is breathtaking not only for its pacing but also for its camera intricacy given all the activity going on.

While the film is a comedy, and full of sexual bravado, it also conveys the brutality and crudeness of the era. The way that animals are treated is particularly unnerving, but also the way that people eat, and food falls out of their mouths because they are chewing and talking, and the food just stays in their beards!! It’s raw and makes for a fascinating contrast of how really, our ability to develop manners and civility is the only thing that separates us from other species that run rampant throughout the film.

As I watched the movie, it reminded me of when I discovered Monty Python in high school. At first, it’s so different in tone and presentation that it takes a bit of opening your mind to really appreciate it. But then once you get it, it just gets funnier and funnier as it continues. That’s how I felt about this film. By the time it gets to the food fest scene (Two characters literally devour food in the most disgusting, and yet hilarious, attempt to express what they want to do with each other sexually…. and it goes on, and on, and on!!) I couldn’t stop laughing.

The movie marquee claims, “The whole world loves Tom Jones!” I don’t know if that’s true, but I know I did!