Brilliant. Olivier should have got that Oscar, but it was the year Ben Hur was released. Or was Olivier just getting to be himself? This film makes a revealing historical document of the working class holiday places of the time that pointed to another era much older. And Alan Bates in his first movie!
If you want to see what everyday life was like in 1950s Britain take a look at this. It's accurate - I know, I was there. An excellent film of Osborne's play with super performances. Captures the sadness of a fading career in a fading genre - music hall.
Groundbreaking British New Wave film adapted by John Osborne from the play he wrote for Laurence Olivier. Critics claim that Larry was far better playing Archie Rice on stage than screen, which is staggering. His performance here is among the masterpieces of English cinema. He killed the role for anyone else.
Archie is a soft shoe shuffle comic in the last days of music hall: bankrupt, lecherous and a little grotesque; barely scraping a living from an old seaside town while his options for the future are closed down. He has no reason to go on, but is unable to stop because it's all he knows. Olivier gives us a journey into his humiliation.
Though Archie is a scoundrel, the star makes it possible to empathise with his degradation. Eventually it becomes clear that this story of a derelict song and dance man still doing the old routines to an indifferent world is an allegory for Britain's diminished status made apparent during the Suez crisis, which is when it is set.
The support cast operates in the shadow of Olivier, but it is interesting to see the film debuts of Alan Bates and Albert Finney. The realistic location shoot in Morecambe during holiday season now makes the film look like a period piece, but the theme of a declining country divided by class, race and the generations is still familiar.