leethomas-11621 Falls flat. Transfer from stage very awkward, Olivier inconsistent, script jumps about and plays for sentimentality. Osborne needed to limit his theme instead of fitting in too many characters. Streamlined, it may have worked. Sentimental family dramas laced with comedy are hard to pull off successfully. Great to see Albert Finney and Alan Bates early in their careers looking very dashing. SPOILER ALERT. How did granddad Billy Rice find out about Archie's plans to divorce Phoebe? I just wished Archie had pondered how his father knew of his scheme to marry the young beauty (WE know). Glossing over important parts of the plot happens again when Frank brings the news of Mike's death and despite her anguish for most of the film, we aren't really shown the mother' full reaction to her son's death. It leaves the film missing an emotional core and I was left with only a distant feeling towards the characters.

Hoagy27 This tour de force, in glorious big screen black & white, features astonishing acting by one and all, not to mention stunning camera work, an exquisite music track and top-notch scripting. The story focuses on a veteran stage entertainer Archie Rice who, to his friends and family is "a bit of a bastard." Despite a lifetime of trying to achieve the fame of his father Archie knows that he does not have what it takes. As he puts it: "I'm dead behind these eyes." With a cast like this you'd expect more than your money's worth of acting and the film does not disappoint, but it does not rest on the acting laurels alone. Originally a stage play, the film has been ably taken to the streets of (mostly) Blackpoole adding a soupcon of spice. Early on there's an interior scene that is shot just a few degrees off horizontal. Just when you begin to wonder why it's off kilter, the camera slowly tilts until the image is straight… and then keeps going (!) until it's just a bit off in the other direction perfectly illustrating the world these characters live in. The story takes another step off the deep end when you consider the history going on around the Rice family: Suez and the fall of the British Empire. Which is, after all, what it's all about.

Robert J. Maxwell Olivier is Archie Rice, an obsolescent music hall singer, comic, and promoter, in Blackpool, a relatively elaborate resort town on the Irish Sea. There's an amusement park, a pier, caravans, thrilling rides, a ferris wheel, and the modest apartment in which Olivier lives with his alcoholic wife, Brenda De Banzie, his retired music-hall performer father, and his three children, one of whom, Albert Finney, is in the army and being shipped off to possible combat in the Suez. (This is 1956.) The gaiety of the resort is mostly fake from the point of view of Olivier's family. He hasn't paid his income tax for twenty years and the feds are after him, so he's desperate for money. His own show at the music hall is ailing. It looks like the kind of production that might have been popular thirty years earlier. The skimpy audiences simply sit and stare. One of the audience remarks, "Does he think he's funny?" Well, yes, he does. Olivier is hardly ever "off", as they say. Like his ancient and good-natured Dad, he loves to tell stories, half of them made up, and make wisecracks that don't quite hit the mark. Olivier's performance -- in distinct contrast to Archie Rice's -- is unimpeachable. He has every move, every glance, down pat. He seems always to be in motion, darting here and there, cackling at his own wit, except when he's coolly calculating how to make enough money to pull him out of the hole he and his family are in.He believes he's found it when he serves as a judge at a beauty contest, leaping up and down, yelling WHOO HOO into the microphone as the half-naked babes parade past. He seduces the runner-up, the yummy Shirley Anne Field, and discovers that her parents are interested, a little, in investing in Olivier's new show. He's given them the impression that he's a big shot.I really didn't care much for the structure of the film. John Osborne must not have been a very happy camper. Everything that could go wrong in Olivier's life DOES in fact go wrong, a rhopalic series of disasters. The odd, tiny bubbles of happiness or satisfaction soon pop. I swear, the single unalloyedly good thing that happens to him is that he gets to spend an afternoon rolling around in the sack with Shirley Anne Field, who is half his age. A little gratuitous nudity in this scene might have lent some uplift to the movie but we have to settle for her snapping her knickers, as the Brits call them, back on after the debauch.This lacuna will leave some viewers feeling less fulfilled then they might have felt, but that's nothing compared to what Olivier's character goes through. I won't spell it all out but Murphy's law applies.Nevertheless, I mentioned Olivier's performance because it's so finely tuned -- but then everybody is quite good. I suppose the delectable Shirley Anne Field gives the weakest performance but there is pathos in every character, whether they know it or not.The main problem is that everything in Osborne's story seems so thoroughly desperate beneath the masks of comedy. One bad thing after another. Cripes, if I wanted tragedy I'd watch Olivier's "Othello." Not that the downbeat ending bothers Olivier much, or at least it doesn't appear to, because he sloughs it off with another would-be funny apothegm.I wouldn't watch it too often. Not if there were any razor blades about.

jotix100 Archie Rice, the fifty-something vaudeville man at the center of the action, has seen better days. He is relegated to play almost empty houses in a seaside resort of England where he lives with his second wife, Phoebe, his father Billy, and retired vaudevillian, and grown children. Archie has an eye for good looking women, the younger, the better. Archie Rice is a pathetic figure who lives in a world of his own, always scheming about who to involve for one of his new shows, that no one seems to care about.Jean Rice, the young daughter living in London, comes home for a visit and she is horrified when she finds out what his father has turned out to be. Jean sees what Archie is doing to Phoebe when he sees his father kissing a much younger woman in a local restaurant. Archie has been trying to convince her parents about the talents Tina doesn't have, in order to take money from them to produce his new venture, which is only an idea in his wild imagination.Tragedy strikes when young Mick Rice, who we had seen earlier as he goes to fight in the Suez conflict, is first reported being taken prisoner and eventually killed. While Phoebe goes to pieces, Archie keeps doing what he only knows what to do. His final speech to an empty theater, but directed to his daughter Jean, reveals the soul of this troubled man.Tony Richardson made a great impression with his second directorial job. He was attuned to the work of John Osborne, one of England's best playwrights of the fifties and sixties that revolutionized the theater. Mr. Richardson is helped by the crisp black and white cinematography by Oswald Morris, who looks as sharp today as when the film was released.The main reason for watching "The Entertainment" is Laurence Olivier. He completely dominates the action and makes us see how pathetic his Archie Rice is. Mr. Olivier knew this man, having been connected to the theater all his life. No one could have done a better job than him in baring his soul for all of us to see. Laurence Olivier shows a tender side in his scenes with Tina, the young woman who has captured his fancy, and who is so young, she could be his own daughter.The rest of the cast is perfection. Roger Livesey, is seen as Archie's father, Billy Rice, a man that has seen a lot during his lifetime and now lives with a son that he knows is up to no good. Brenda DeBanzie is fine as Phoebe, a woman of a certain age that is losing Archie. Joan Plowright was Jean, the young daughter. Also in minor roles some actors that will go to stardom in their own right, Alan Bates, Albert Finney, and Daniel Massey, who died much too young. "The Entertainer" is a fine film that shows the talents of Laurence Olivier and Tony Richardson.