Search - Tom Jones [Widescreen] on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Adult Situations Movie Release: 1963 DVD Release: 06/19/2001 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV Audio Tracks: English, French, Spanish Subtitles: English, French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 9 mins Studio: MGM Members Wishing: 14 Genres: Adventure, Comedy, Costume Adventure, Comedy of Manners See Also: Tom Jones

Tony Richardson's adaptation of Henry Fielding's classic novel was one of the most critically acclaimed and popular comedies of its time, winning four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The film follows Tom Jones (Albert Finney), a country boy who becomes one of the wildest playboys in 18th century England, developing a ravenous taste for women, food, and rowdy adventures. Over the course of the film, Jones tries to amass his own fortune and win the heart of Sophie (Susannah York). Not only does John Osborne's Oscar-winning screenplay stay true to the tone of the novel, but the cast -- including Lynn Redgrave in her first screen role -- tears into the story with spirited abandon, making the movie a wildly entertaining and witty experience. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Albert Finney - Tom Jones
Susannah York - Sophie Western
Hugh Griffith - Squire Western
Edith Evans - Miss Western
Joan Greenwood - Lady Bellaston

A dozen years after Tony Richardson's Tom Jones was re-released in a restored version, it's finally shown up in a home-video edition worth owning. The laserdisc edition from HBO/Warner, based on the 1989 re-release (which Richardson shortened by seven minutes), suffered from a washed out, grainy image that hardly seemed to have been restored, and scarcely looked better than the early-'80s Magnetic Video laserdisc, which was under license from UA, and very disappointing. The MGM/UA DVD, released in June 2001, supplants the HBO edition, re-establishing the film's original cut in a bright new transfer that overcomes all the shortcomings of the laserdisc version.

The picture isn't perfect -- it's still a bit soft, but the grain that marred the laserdisc transfer is gone, replaced by deep, solid colors. The sound is also cleaner and sharper than the laserdisc, which brings out the almost nonstop humor in John Addison's delightful score. The film has been issued as part of MGM's Vintage Classics line, which is a stripped down, low-priced series, cheaper in fact than the earlier HBO DVD edition of the 1989 re-release version of the movie; this also means that there are no extras, which is shoddy treatment for a movie that won the Academy Award for Best Picture and put a brace of important new cinematic talent on the map in the early '60s. Additionally, the 129-minute movie could have been broken down into more chapters than the paltry 15 we get here. The only bonus is an original trailer, which itself points up a certain irony -- Tom Jones was originally distributed by United Artists, which made a fortune off of the movie but never kept any proper preservation materials on it, thus making necessary the late-'80s restoration that was issued through the Samuel Goldwyn Company. But MGM/UA's acquisition of the Goldwyn library returned the movie to the hands of United Artists, the same company that didn't take care of it in the first place. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide