A Spotlight on Restoration in Columbus

Starting today, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, kicks off the fourth annual installment of Cinema Revival, a six-day celebration of film preservation that will include a Sunday-afternoon screening of Criterion’s new 4K restoration of Tony Richardson’s 1963 film Tom Jones. (Attendees also shouldn’t miss the Friday-night program devoted to our restoration of Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, featuring an introduction by Criterion’s very own Lee Kline, Cara Shatzman, and Russell Smith.) A radical departure for Richardson and playwright John Osborne, who had previously been associated with the contemporary social realism of the British New Wave, the farcical Tom Jones harked all the way back to the eighteenth century, channeling the bawdy spirit of Henry Fielding’s canonical picaresque novel. The creative change of pace couldn’t have paid off more handsomely for the filmmakers: the freewheeling and stylistically inventive movie—which stars a charming Albert Finney as the foundling of the title—became a substantial international hit and took home the Oscar for best picture. If you can’t make it to the screening, be sure to check out our edition of Tom Jones, which comes out next week and includes the original theatrical version of the film (the one screening at Cinema Revival) as well as the seven-minutes-shorter director’s cut from 1989.