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"The Entertainer" is a fascinating film based on the play by John Osborne ("Look Back in Anger"); Osborne co-wrote the screenplay.

Olivier plays Archie Rice, a fading entertainer in a fading medium (music halls) in a fading empire (the Suez crisis of 1956 figures into the action).

Archie's speech to his daughter (Joan Plowright), onstage in an empty theater, about being dead behind his eyes, is especially memorable.

Along with other fine actors, Alan Bates and Albert Finney as his sons flesh out this film, which is a must-see for fans of any of these actors.

As someone who lives only a couple of miles away from where this film was set, it makes me practically WEEP to see how busy and vibrant Morecambe used to be in the 50s/60s. OK, so the film is about how it's passed its heyday, but compared to how it is now - seeing the same scenery (it's hardly changed) - the Midland Hotel, The Winter Gardens (now a nightclub), it's hard not to get painful pangs of nostalgia.

This is ultimately a depressing film - Archie is one of those people who deals with tragedy by "blanking" it out with bad jokes. In the film he seduces the winner (2nd place) of a beauty contest - a woman old enough to be his daughter. Shortly after the film, Laurence Oliver married Joan Plowright who actually PLAYED his daughter in this film. Anyone for irony?

There are some wonderfully subtle takes on British "class" - I love Thora Hird (a long way from Praise Be and Stannah Stairlifts here) as the grasping mum of the Beauty-contest winner, while Brenda de Banzie is great as neurotic, looked-over, teary, nervy Phoebe - "I've got a new job in Woolworths, on the electrical counter. It's OK, but the girls are a bit common." Well Phoebe, you'll be pleased to know that the branch of Woolworths is still there...

I've seen this movie many times on tv and still feel irresistibly drawn into the realistic setting of people's humdrum lives at a British seaside resort. Some films can be viewed once and that's enough, but not this one.

All the cast members are remarkable in projecting the ordinary bleakness of the story's circumstances -- the people, time and place, their foibles, tragedies, and often futile efforts as they struggle with events. Believe it or not, I even got to like Olivier's singing of "Why Should I Care"!

A memorable, thoughtful film well worth experiencing.

As an American, getting a peek at post-War Britain in decline, a look at Olivier as a most interesting character in the person of never-was vaudevillian Archie Rice, and a look at several British players (Joan Plowright, Anthony Bates, and Albert Finney) very early in their careers is priceless.

Archie Rice is a despicable character, and the drama centers on his problems of having all of his financial issues - including some long overdue tax debt - come to a head just as he can finally get no more work as a vaudevillian even in the bad music halls. He has a way out - one of his relatives will pay off his debts if he'll accept his drunken wife's nephew's offer to run a motel in Canada. But like any Briton who can remember England's finer days he's just not about to cut and run, and even though I can despise the lying, the cheating on his used up wife, his odd ideas about parenting, and his willingness to use his own father, I can't help but admire his "pioneer spirit" to use an American term. He'd rather fail on his own terms than succeed on someone else's.

Joan Plowright is the other lead, and she plays Archie's daughter, Jean. She shows some pioneer spirit herself. She shares some characteristics with dad - she's a painter who can't paint, Archie's a vaudevillian who can't entertain. Unlike dad, she owns up to her shortcomings and wants to make a contribution anyways by teaching art to poor slum kids. She has a way out of Britain just like dad does. Her fiancé has been offered a job opportunity in Africa, and he encourages her to leave her dead country behind, but she just isn't ready to give up on England or her family just yet. The two have a falling out and Jean goes to visit her dysfunctional family, in which she finds comfort.

I just don't get people who say that they don't like this one because it's boring, depressing, ugly. Every minute of this film held my interest and stayed with me long after I'd watched it. I think you need to have lived awhile, to have had disappointments, and to have dealt with those disappointments in ways you may not be proud of to really appreciate this film.

Absorbing, involving, lightening and amusing but then this is adapted from a John Osborne play and even the cinematic opening up and the seeming insensitivity of director Tony Richardson cannot take that away. Instead of a tight and dark tale of a washed up entertainer against the background of a post war, washed up Britain embroiled in a hopeless Suez fiasco, the emphasis is more on family break-up and the last days of Music Hall. Lawrence Olivier is fantastic and Alan Bates excellent in his first film. Albert Finney is effective in an early role but Joan Plowright and Roger Liversey seem out of place in such a film. Opening up the film version, of course, means we get plenty of locations shots of Morecombe and Blackpool but is rather a shame that the full impact of the angry middle aged man and the farewell to old England gets a little lost along the way.