Blu-ray, DVD Release: Tom Jones (1963)

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Feb. 27, 2018
Price: DVD $23.97, Blu-ray $25.97
Studio: Criterion

In the early 1960s, at the height of the British New Wave, a movement whose gritty realism they had helped establish, director Tony Richardson (A Taste of Honey) and playwright John Osborne set out for more fanciful narrative territory…and they found it in 1963’s Tom Jones.

The romance-adventure brings a theatrical flair to Henry Fielding’s canonical eighteenth-century novel, boisterously chronicling the misadventures of the foundling of the title (Albert Finney, in a career-defining turn), whose easy charm seems to lead him astray at every turn from his beloved, the well-born Sophie Western (Susannah York, The Killing of Sister George).

Albert Finney is Tom Jones

This spirited picaresque, evocatively shot in England’s rambling countryside and featuring an extraordinary ensemble cast, went on to become a worldwide sensation, winning the Oscar for best picture on the way to securing its status as a classic of irreverent wit and playful cinematic expression.

Criterion’s editions of Tom Jones offers the 1963 theatrical version, as well as Richardson’s 1989 director’s cut of the film…which clocks in at seven minutes shorter than the theatrical cut!

The Blu-ray and DVD editions (both of which contain two discs) offer the following:

* New 4K digital restorations of the original theatrical version of the film and the 1989 director’s cut, both supervised by director of photography Walter Lassally, with uncompressed monaural and stereo soundtracks on the Blu-ray
* New program on the film’s cinematography featuring a conversation between Lassally and critic Peter Cowie
* Excerpt from a 1982 episode of The Dick Cavett Show featuring actor Albert Finney
* New interview with actor Vanessa Redgrave on director Tony Richardson, to whom she was married from 1962 to 1967
* New interview with film scholar Duncan Petrie on the movie’s impact on British cinema
* Illustrated archival audio interview with composer John Addison on his Oscar-winning score for the film
* New interview with the director’s-cut editor, Robert Lambert
* An essay by scholar Neil Sinyard