Due to some difficulty I had in getting my hands on Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones, I was unable to post this review last week as promised. Sorry about that. As usual, to vote for the next Reviews By Request selection, see the poll at the end of this review.

In a survey of the Oscar winners for Best Picture, Tony Richardson’s 1963 film Tom Jones is one of the more intriguing titles. Sure, it’s an adaptation of the classic novel by Henry Fielding, but this is hardly the kind of reverent literary epic that usually gets the Academy to take notice. But beyond its bawdy comedy, it’s also a stylistic departure from the usual period pieces, with Richardson employing the techniques of the French New Wave to take the wind out of the wigs-and-horses period setting. On paper, Tom Jones is just the kind of movie that ought to be recognized more often by the Academy- a film that boldly tweaks cinematic convention in an attempt to entertain audiences in a unique way. But the trouble with judging a movie on paper is that sooner or later one must actually see it to get the whole story, and in the case of Tom Jones, the whole story is that it doesn’t live up to its potential.

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