Tom Jones (1963)

Director:	Tony Richardson
Actors:	Angela Baddeley, Susannah York, Albert Finney, David Tomlinson, Hugh Griffith, Joan Greenwood, Edith Evans, George Devine, Diane Cilento, Rosalind Atkinson

Tony Richardson's rousing adaptation of Henry Fielding's classic comic novel stars Albert Finney as the eponymous swordsman. TOM JONES achieved enormous critical and commercial success, benefiting from an excellent cast, lively score, and unusually realistic art direction. While the film surely deserves this praise, Richardson initially considered it a failure, and it's likely that he saved the film in the editing room, emphasizing the farcical elements of the story with rapid intercutting, and adding amusingly ironic voice-over narration. The end product is one of the most entertaining costume dramas ever put on celluloid.