This movie in my opinion is the worst movie to win best picture. It took me 3 tries to watch the whole thing and even though I tried watching it all the way through in one sitting I just could not do it. I kept falling asleep or just stopped paying attention. I guess it is supposed to be a comedy but I did not find it funny at all. If anyone knows why this is still considered a good movie please let me know.
The movie is about Tom Jones(Albert Finney) an illegitimate baby adopted by a rich squire in 18th century England . The baby grows up to be irreverent and very found of women and drink. He has sex with one of his adopted father’s servants and is eventually kicked out of the house where he then travels to London . Along the way he gets into even more trouble has sex with more women (one who turns out might be his mother!) and eventually makes it to London where he hooks up with a rich older women. All this time he keeps professing his love for his neighbor’s daughter Sophie. Sophie runs away from her house when she is set in an arranged marriage to Tom’s cousin. She eventually makes it London only to find Tom living the high life with his new mistress. Eventually after many antics and a few crazy revelations they do end up together.
I read somewhere that this is supposed to be a romantic comedy. I found it neither romantic nor a comedy. It was just a boring really crazy movie. I do not understand why Sophie likes Tom so much even though he is always off sleeping with other women, and in the end it doesn’t seem to matter. She just accepts him back. The other problem with this movie is the crazy camera work. It just jarring and seems out of place. I can’t even say the acting is good because it is hard to believe that this movie got 5 nominations for acting including 3 for best supporting actress. Luckily it did not win any(the only movie to have 5 nomination for acting and not win any). All I kept thinking is how bad Albert Finney was and how good he was in Erin Brockovich another role he was nominated for. I read one of the actors (Hugh Griffith) was drunk through the whole movie which really shows how little they cared for the movie and I think it shows.
I think 1963 was another year where any movie that was released the year before could have won best picture. For example if To Kill a Mockingbird was released in ’63 instead of ’62 there was no way it was going to lose. What should have won in ’63? In my opinion The Birds one of the best Hitchcock movies which wasn’t even nominated. Other movies The Great Escape, The Pink Panther, and while I never saw it I heard Lilies of the Field was a great movie and did win Sidney Poitier’s only Academy Award. The other movie that was nominated and had a lot of press that year was the big budget epic Cleopatra. Which almost put 20th Century Fox into bankruptcy.
It also marks the second time in the 60's that a movie about sexual promiscuity won best picture. Showing again how in the 60's the film industry was pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable to show in theatres. With lots of sex (none on screen but very much implied) and some partial nudity this is by far the most sexually explicit movie to win best picture up to that time.
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