THE ENTERTAINER is another kitchen sink drama based on a play by John Osborne. It's of note thanks to a towering central performance from an against-type and all but unrecognisable Laurence Olivier playing a seedy, sleazy end-of-pier music hall entertainer in the dying days of the industry. Olivier's character is completely horrid but also oddly enthralling; much like a train or car wreck you can't help but watch to see what unfolds.The film is bolstered by the usual effective performances from the supporting cast members, all of whom are naturalistic and engaging in their various parts. The black and white photography brings out the coastal locations quite neatly and the film has an undercurrent of suspense that builds to a fittingly downbeat climax. For a '70s version of the same story, try Reg Varney in THE BEST PAIR OF LEGS IN THE BUSINESS.

barefoot-gal from United States gave a spot on review of this allegorical film. Yes, it represented the decline of the British Empire after WW2. The Egyptians had just dared to thumb their noses at Great Britain by seizing the Suez Canal, and thus showed them that the Empire was finished. Other colonies were not far behind in defying the country which they felt had exploited them for so long, for which they had no loyalty. By using the dysfunctional impoverished Rice family as a metaphor, the film showed the end of an era as the once immensely popular music hall was grinding to a halt in run down theaters in seedy seaside towns, themselves coming to the end of their hey-day as package holidays to the Mediterranean were becoming popular and affordable. Entertainment by fading vaudevillians which which would have appealed to a captive audience of servicemen and people who could not go abroad in war time no longer had appeal. The audience wanted something new. The audience had no loyalty to a form of entertainment which had held a monopoly until alternatives arrived, just as today's audiences have deserted the cinema for TV, and now are deserting TV for DVD's and Internet downloads. Supermarket checkouts have replaced individual service in groceries, and on line retailing is replacing department stores. Why should they care? Those who cannot adapt, perish.Archie Rice is the son of a popular music hall star of the Edwardian era, without his talent; nevertheless, it is the only life he knows and he is trying to make a living for himself and his family. We see this many times as the son of a star, with Jr. tacked on to the famous name, tries and fails to follow in his father's footsteps and cash in on his name, but there is only room for one. Archie Rice knows that he will never make it, but he has to go on as it is all he knows. As barefoot-gal noted, we are still seeing this today as proud occupations are superseded by a new technology and the skilled worker becomes obsolete.Archie makes a desperate attempt to raise money for a new show and make himself feel he still has what it takes by seducing a beauty contest runner up whose affluent mother will put up the money in return for a role for her daughter. We never see whether she is anything more than a pretty face awed by a whiff of show biz.Had Archie been born 20 years earlier he may well have made a good living on the halls performing the same act week after week for years as he travelled around the provinces, but there is little demand for live entertainment and millions of people are seeing a variety act at once via TV. Times are changing and he either gives in, or just goes on day after day putting one foot in front of the other and trying to hold it all together. This is a film which is uncomfortable to watch, but makes the viewer think and remember for a long, long, time. Someone referred to it as a Greek Tragedy, and I would agree.

Laurence Olivier is "The Entertainer," in a 1960 film based on the John Osborne play in which Olivier played one of his greatest roles, Archie Rice. He's surrounded by Joan Plowright as Archie's daughter Jean, and Brenda de Banzie as his emotionally fragile second wife, Phoebe. Olivier, Plowwright and de Banzie all repeat their stage roles, and it was while in the play that Olivier and Plowright met, fell in love, married, and stayed together until his death. Albert Finney is Mick and Alan Bates is Frank, Archie's sons, and Roger Livesey is Billy Rice, Archie's father and a beloved, well remembered music hall performer. Daniel Massey plays the role of Graham. It's an auspicious cast of veterans and newcomers.Archie has followed in his father's footsteps with a lot less success. He's a second-rate entertainer - and that's being kind - in a seaside resort - and his show is in trouble. Archie's in trouble, too, as he's an undischarged bankruptcy and everything is in his wife's name. He's a fairly overt womanizer, which makes his wife a wreck. She's afraid of dying alone and wants the family to move to Canada and join a successful relative in the hotel business. But Archie won't give up following every dream in spite of some harsh realities. He takes up with a 20-year-old second prize beauty contestant - her father's rich and can back his new show.As I read through the reviews on IMDb, I have to wonder where some people's hearts are. That's not a comment on the people, believe me, rather on the world we live in. I can tell you this - if you think what Olivier does isn't special and can't understand why he was nominated for an Oscar, if you can't see that he is Everyman, if you can't see the comment on Britain in general - you just haven't lived enough yet. You'll see this film again one day and it'll hurt, believe me. There can't be anyone my age, especially with ambition and a creative mind, who can't understand what Archie Rice is going through. Though he's in no way a sympathetic character, one can empathize with his life and begrudgingly admire the fact that he refuses to take the easy way out.Jean, since she doesn't live full time with this bad road company version of "Long Day's Journey Into Night" - i.e., her family - is sympathetic to both Phoebe's hysteria and her father's delusions. The scene over the cake - one of the reviewers on the board found it disturbingly realistic - there's someone who knows dysfunction when he sees it. A brilliant scene, but nothing beats Archie's monologue to his daughter when he asks her to look at his eyes. "I'm dead," he says.Olivier has said this is his favorite character as it contains so much of him. It's obvious from interviews with Olivier that it does. Like many highly successful people, he began to see himself as Archie, a kind of fake who, as Archie says, can be warm and smiling and feel nothing. "It's all tricks," Olivier told writer Jack Kroll once. It's not an uncommon feeling. It wasn't all tricks, of course, and as we see in Archie's final version of the song that ran through the film, "Why Should I Care?" he had finally reached the part of himself that makes a truly great artist, like the woman he heard sing the spiritual. Olivier, of course, hit those heights many times.England is pronounced as a "dying country" in the beginning of the film, which sets up the metaphor of Archie as a symbol of the country. I'm not British - it's for those who lived during that time period in 1960 to comment on it, and they have. There are some brilliant reviews on the board covering that subject."Why Should I Care?" Archie sings. I don't have an answer. But if anyone could make me care, it was always Lord Laurence Olivier, be he the ruined man in "Carrie," the beautiful Heathcliff in "Wuthering Heights," James Tyrone on stage in "Long Day's Journey," or Max de Winter in "Rebecca." An amazing legacy, one in a million - don't miss him as Archie Rice in "The Entertainer."

Spoilers herein.I love films where the context of the film perfectly matches its content. Here we have an aging star vainly trying to hold on. Olivier was much celebrated in his youth for his energetic reading of Shakespeare. That's a plus in Britain where accident has forged the notion that his plays are all about providing empty vessels for actors with power and nerve. Quite apart from the dangers of so limiting Shakespeare, this limits a career too. If one is rooted in the theatrical, and one is celebrated for overjuicing roles in such a way that they thrill, then like any other athlete, you are doomed to fade. And this, just as your peers are blossoming as cinematic icons!That's what this story is about as well.That energy is essentially sexual. How does an older man regain sexual energy? By taking a young lover of course. That is both what our character and actor does, placing their beauties in their productions. Joan Plowright is the center of the project, and rightly so. Around her, his grandness publicly explores what it means to be out of gas with the world on your case.Intellectually, this is a profoundly interesting project. But the bottom line is, well he IS out of gas.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.