THE ENTERTAINER

Archie Rice, a thirdrate song, dance and patter man is the star of a limp girlshow wilting in a halfempty seaside theatre. Jean, Archie's daughter returns to her family in Morecambe after failing as an East End art teacher and quarrelling with her fiancé. Archie is trying to promote a new show while his present one crumbles around him; Phoebe, his second wife, has been reduced by Archie's sarcasm and neglect to maudlin drunkenness and hysteria; and Archie's father Billy, a retired music hall artist, surveys the ménage with nostalgia, dignity and some contempt. When news comes that Mick has been taken prisoner Archie is busily embroiled in a sexual adventure with Tina Lapford, a teenage, having promised her parents a part for Tina in his new show if they will furnish the money. Billy tells Mrs. Lapford that his son is an undischarged bankrunpt. But by the time the Lapfords have withdrawn their backing, Archie has signed his name to various cheques. News comes that Mick has been killed at Suez. Archie, exploiting his father's remorse, sets up a new show, combining nudes with nostalgia, with the old man as partner and star. But even this scheme fails. Billy finds the strain of a comeback too great and dies in the wings. Archie turns his back on the emptying audience and walks towards Jean across a deserted, barren stage.

"Though a growing tendency towards a generally stagy acting style has been carried forward from Look Back, this does not invalidate Laurence Olivier's playing of Archie. Like Burton in the earlier film, Olivier gains from the closeups and the writtenin scenes. his excruciating conviviality, broken, cranefly walk and overprecise diction all have that rancid, bloated, appropriately theatrical tinge of a desperate courage dredged up from endless years of pretence, offstage as well as on." ("Monthly Film Bulletin", n. 320, September 1960, p. 124)

Director: Tony Richardson.
Screenplay: John Osborne, Nigel Kneale, dalla commedia di Osborne.
Director of photography: Oswald Morris.
Editor: Alan Osbiston.
Art director: Ralph Brinton.
Music: John Addison.
Sound: Peter Handford, Bob Jones.
Coreografia: Honor Blair.
Cast: Laurence Olivier (Archie Rice), Joan Plowright (Jean), Brenda de Banzie (Phoebe Rice), Alan Bates (Frank), Roger Livesey (Billy), Shirley Ann Field (Tina), Thora Hird (la signora Lapford), Daniel Massey (Graham), Miriam Karlin (la soubrette), Goeffrey Toone (Hubbard), Albert Finney (Mick), James Culliford (Carson), Gilbert Davis (fratello Bill).
Production company: Harry Saltzman, John Croydon per la Woodfall/Holly .