Oscars Retrospective: Tom Jones (36th Academy Awards Review)

Tom Jones Suite~Tom Jones - John Addison I gotta give the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences points on this one for originality. Tom Jones is probably the single most bizarre and against-type movie to have ever won the Academy Award for Best Picture. We’ve seen 35 of these movies made so far and usually they’ve been big romances, sweeping epics, experimentations with new sound systems, Westerns, war dramas, character studies of alcoholics, societal satires, blue-collar fairy tales, heartwarming comedies and Biblical epics. Reaching into the future, they would bestow their greatness upon more of the same as well as adding some Mafia dramas, white man’s burden/guilt, period pieces, biopics and fantasy films. A dry screwball comedy set in medieval Britain though? Yeah, that’s a unique one. Tom Jones is based upon a comedic novel called The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (1749) and is about the l...