Olivier is Archie Rice, an obsolescent music hall singer, comic, and promoter, in Blackpool, a relatively elaborate resort town on the Irish Sea. There's an amusement park, a pier, caravans, thrilling rides, a ferris wheel, and the modest apartment in which Olivier lives with his alcoholic wife, Brenda De Banzie, his retired music-hall performer father, and his three children, one of whom, Albert Finney, is in the army and being shipped off to possible combat in the Suez. (This is 1956.) The gaiety of the resort is mostly fake from the point of view of Olivier's family. He hasn't paid his income tax for twenty years and the feds are after him, so he's desperate for money. His own show at the music hall is ailing. It looks like the kind of production that might have been popular thirty years earlier. The skimpy audiences simply sit and stare. One of the audience remarks, "Does he think he's funny?"
Well, yes, he does. Olivier is hardly ever "off", as they say. Like his ancient and good-natured Dad, he loves to tell stories, half of them made up, and make wisecracks that don't quite hit the mark. Olivier's performance -- in distinct contrast to Archie Rice's -- is unimpeachable. He has every move, every glance, down pat. He seems always to be in motion, darting here and there, cackling at his own wit, except when he's coolly calculating how to make enough money to pull him out of the hole he and his family are in.
He believes he's found it when he serves as a judge at a beauty contest, leaping up and down, yelling WHOO HOO into the microphone as the half-naked babes parade past. He seduces the runner-up, the yummy Shirley Anne Field, and discovers that her parents are interested, a little, in investing in Olivier's new show. He's given them the impression that he's a big shot.
I really didn't care much for the structure of the film. John Osborne must not have been a very happy camper. Everything that could go wrong in Olivier's life DOES in fact go wrong, a rhopalic series of disasters. The odd, tiny bubbles of happiness or satisfaction soon pop. I swear, the single unalloyedly good thing that happens to him is that he gets to spend an afternoon rolling around in the sack with Shirley Anne Field, who is half his age. A little gratuitous nudity in this scene might have lent some uplift to the movie but we have to settle for her snapping her knickers, as the Brits call them, back on after the debauch.
This lacuna will leave some viewers feeling less fulfilled then they might have felt, but that's nothing compared to what Olivier's character goes through. I won't spell it all out but Murphy's law applies.
Nevertheless, I mentioned Olivier's performance because it's so finely tuned -- but then everybody is quite good. I suppose the delectable Shirley Anne Field gives the weakest performance but there is pathos in every character, whether they know it or not.
The main problem is that everything in Osborne's story seems so thoroughly desperate beneath the masks of comedy. One bad thing after another. Cripes, if I wanted tragedy I'd watch Olivier's "Othello." Not that the downbeat ending bothers Olivier much, or at least it doesn't appear to, because he sloughs it off with another would-be funny apothegm.
I wouldn't watch it too often. Not if there were any razor blades about.
Well, yes, he does. Olivier is hardly ever "off", as they say. Like his ancient and good-natured Dad, he loves to tell stories, half of them made up, and make wisecracks that don't quite hit the mark. Olivier's performance -- in distinct contrast to Archie Rice's -- is unimpeachable. He has every move, every glance, down pat. He seems always to be in motion, darting here and there, cackling at his own wit, except when he's coolly calculating how to make enough money to pull him out of the hole he and his family are in.
He believes he's found it when he serves as a judge at a beauty contest, leaping up and down, yelling WHOO HOO into the microphone as the half-naked babes parade past. He seduces the runner-up, the yummy Shirley Anne Field, and discovers that her parents are interested, a little, in investing in Olivier's new show. He's given them the impression that he's a big shot.
I really didn't care much for the structure of the film. John Osborne must not have been a very happy camper. Everything that could go wrong in Olivier's life DOES in fact go wrong, a rhopalic series of disasters. The odd, tiny bubbles of happiness or satisfaction soon pop. I swear, the single unalloyedly good thing that happens to him is that he gets to spend an afternoon rolling around in the sack with Shirley Anne Field, who is half his age. A little gratuitous nudity in this scene might have lent some uplift to the movie but we have to settle for her snapping her knickers, as the Brits call them, back on after the debauch.
This lacuna will leave some viewers feeling less fulfilled then they might have felt, but that's nothing compared to what Olivier's character goes through. I won't spell it all out but Murphy's law applies.
Nevertheless, I mentioned Olivier's performance because it's so finely tuned -- but then everybody is quite good. I suppose the delectable Shirley Anne Field gives the weakest performance but there is pathos in every character, whether they know it or not.
The main problem is that everything in Osborne's story seems so thoroughly desperate beneath the masks of comedy. One bad thing after another. Cripes, if I wanted tragedy I'd watch Olivier's "Othello." Not that the downbeat ending bothers Olivier much, or at least it doesn't appear to, because he sloughs it off with another would-be funny apothegm.
I wouldn't watch it too often. Not if there were any razor blades about.