Appendix 3.2: Sample films - synopses and character lists
TOM JONES UK 63
Allworthy's heir, his nephew Blifil. She is horrified and
refuses whereupon her bucolic father locks her up in a tower.
Meanwhile the truly beastly Blifil, aided by the two tutors,
Messrs. Thwackem and Square, slanders Tom to his guardian who
has no option but to banish him. Tom setsoff to 'seek his
fortune' in London, having various adventures on the way.
Sophie escapes from her tower and runs away, eventually ending
up in London with her cousin Harriet, who is also on the run
from her hot tempered Irish husband. In London various
machinations and coincidences occur which keep Tom and Sophie
apart and lead to Tom's arrest. Just in time his true
parentage is revealed and he is rescued from the Tyburn
gallows and united with Sophie by the two delighted Squires.
The film is both pleasurable to look at and an absorbing
story. Through the sophisticated story telling devices
outlined above, and the labyrinthine complexities of the plot
and personnel if not of character, various questions are
insistently posed. The problem which fuels the narrative is
ostensibly one relating to class and social conventions. Tom
and Sophie cannot marry because they are of a different class
by virtue of their birth. The propriety of this obstacle is
never questioned by any of the characters nor by the narrator,
yet the film constantly offers examples of the abuse of class
privilege, and by this means implicitly holds class divisions
up to ridicule. Similarly money is shown to be an
inappropriate motive for action. Money is the main reason for
Blifil1S dastardly campaign against Tom; the presence or
absence of money causes minor characters - such as the
innkeeper at the first inn - to behave quite differently
whereas it is unimportant to 'good' characters like Mrs
Miller, Partridge or Tom himself. Through its elaborate and
heavily emphasised pretence the film thus invites condemnation
of pretentiousness in class, money and religion. Of more
concern here however is its depiction of gender relations.
There is considerable emphasis on sensuality and sexual play
and display of one kind and another, as well as on conventions
of marriage and familial relations as determined by systems of
religion and class. What the film does is to begin to
separate these tangled skeins and to offer representations of
sexual desire, romantic love, marital (in)fidelity, filial
devotion and so on as separable and in most cases separate
entities. The preferred reading invites the audience to
approve each of these with the sole proviso that it is 'real',
that is to say that it is the result of the character's
essential self and not produced, performed, as it were, for
any ulterior reasons. Hence we are invited to enjoy Tom and
Mrs Walter's deliciously lascivious dinner, but we must
condemn Blifil1S advances to Sophie. Or, to take another
example, we may applaud Tom's delight in Squire Allworthy's
recovery, while we are rightly suspicious about the
duplicitous Lady Belleston1S concern for Sophie's welfare.
It is of interest, finally, to note that although Tom is
constantly defined by other characters as irresistible to
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