Movie Review: Tom Jones

Tom Jones is the 1963 Best Picture winner. It is situated in England in the 18th century. "It is an adaptation of Henry Fielding's classic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), " (Wikipedia) Not to be confused with the awful 60's singer Tom Jones, or celebrity Tommy Lee Jones.

I have mixed feelings about the movie. On one hand, it used several camera techniques that seemed new to Oscar Winners. On the other hand, I can't say that I enjoy those techniques. They include speeding up the film so that it feels like fast forward, pausing the film for the narrator, using the 4th wall to speak directly to the audience.


Also the use of humor was different, though I give up trying to put into words why it is different.

The sexual aspect is much more liberal, as is the most obvious thing when watching these in a string. The previous movies that had main themes about sex somewhat were The Apartment (1960) and From Here to Eternity (1953) and a few others touch upon it . I guess Gone with the Wind implies it. Clearly I am not speaking about a comfortable subject right now. Anyway my point was that this movie has slightly more nudity than other movies, and it is basically about a guy who sleeps with oh 3,4 or 5 women throughout the movie. The movie allows the viewer to think that Tom Jones slept with his mother for about a minute, and that was disgusting. So this is pushing it, but not really for the 1960's. I know there will be more towards this trend (and I'm somewhat dreading it).

But alas, my opinion. I somewhat enjoyed Tom Jones, although I don't recommend it. It was kind of hard to understand the British accents and sayings, and the DVD didn't offer English subtitles. And for half the time, we were thinking "This movie is weird". The other half I thought was funny.