Catching You Up, 7/7: Tom Jones

The last of these, and one of my favorite films.

Tom Jones.
Okay, I know this movie came out in 1963, but it won Best Picture. It's a wonderful film. And I got to see it at the Lincoln Center last month. Also, I have seen Tom Jones before (three times), but I must recommend it most heartily.

I have read the book, and been taught to love the book, and its main character, which is really not that difficult if he looks like Albert Finney. I've picked up the book since watching it, and I can't understand how I ever thought Tom could have been anyone else. It's a perfectly cast film.

Much is taken out for the purposes of making the movie a reasonable length. The first 200 pages are summed up in a short silent section preceding the film's title credits. Characters are cut out (although it was not until my fourth viewing that I mused, "I miss Nightengale"), but the characters that remain are rendered even truer than the reader could have hoped. The dining scene between Tom and Mrs. Waters is the stuff of cinema legend, the hunt is a wonderful sequence to stand on its own, Sophia is even more beautiful than you hoped, and you know Mr. Fielding would have approved of characters breaking the fourth wall whenever they could.

But none of this compares to Squire Western. He amused me in the book, but my inner feminist was really ticked at the way he treated his daughter. But when he's right in front of you, completely drunk and doing the most ludicrous things, you find yourself laughing. And here are the reasons to love him:

• He sleeps on his dogs.
• He throws his beer at his dogs.
• He shoves one of his dogs off the table to get to his food.
• He falls on a woman and begins to hump her.
• He saves his daughter from rape by throwing her over his shoulder and slapping her ass.
• Did we mention the sleeping on his dogs?
• He fights for Tom, even when Tom should be beaten.
• He does all of these things three sheets to the wind.

Tom is amazing, but he's not getting a bulleted list. Because reading the book you come to love him. I've had a professor dub him "The Greatest Thigh Spreader in History," and I concur. Tom Jones is so awesome, he's got a facebook profile. You should friend him.

I really do recommend this movie, whether you want to be a film buff, a filmmaker, or you need to waste time and you can't get out to the movies. And if you dig it, get the book. It's a bit of work, (982 pages with strange Capitalization and Seemingly Random Italics) but ultimately worth it.

The only thing missing is Peter O'Toole.
GRADE: A+