| Despite the long tradition of anti-heroic characters in cinema, many filmgoers still equate the quality of a film with how well they like its characters, and it’s common now to hear the same old refrain: "It was an awful film – there wasn’t a single character I liked."
It’s a simple-minded way to judge movies, and it doesn’t leave any room for larger-than-life figures like Orson Welles’s Charles Foster Kane (Citizen Kane), Marlon Brando’s Colonel Walter Kurtz (Apocalypse Now), Humphrey Bogart’s Philip Marlowe (The Big Sleep) or countless others.
Moreover, if unlikability is taken to be the measure of cinematic failure, it’s particularly vexing to wonder how any audience could admire Laurence Olivier’s performance as a washed up vaudevillian in The Entertainer (U.K., 1960). Yet, it is exactly Olivier’s embodiment of failure in the character of Archie Rice, that makes this portrayal so strangely distinguished. It’s not everyday you see the grand thespian as a scheming womanizer who will stop short at nothing, save "a bit of crackling," to revive his stagnant career.
Cinema needs more pathetic, desperate characters like this, not because they make us feel better about ourselves, but precisely because they reveal humanity at its most pitiable and make us consider our own failings.
It’s not that Archie is without a certain charm – it’s just that his debonair attitude makes him seem all the more predatory. As Archie pursues a new "protégé" – a second-rate beauty queen who’s less than half his age – and considers dumping his long-suffering wife, the audience begins to see through his conniving, but, sadly, his family does not. With the exception of his doting but frustrated daughter, played by Joan Plowright, no one stands up to the old bastard, and he’s left to sing "Why Should I Care" to a crowd of plebes who couldn’t care less.
Thus, The Entertainer is as much about society’s shortcomings as it is about those of any individual, no matter how odious. It’s worth noting that playwright John Osborne (Look Back In Anger), the angriest of Britain’s angry young men, wrote the play on which The Entertainer is based, and, like much of Osborne’s work, the film takes aim at British gentility in the post-war period. As Archie’s father and his cronies sing "Don’t Scrap the British Navy" it’s a clear indication of the futility of those who were striving to hang on to the last vestiges of Imperialism.
Meanwhile, Osborne was well aware that his nation’s prosperity was quickly fading along with the Imperialist era. What remained was a time in which there was little hope for anyone, young or old – and that alone leads to Archie’s tragic flaw. His stubborn belief that his meagre life will someday get better – with the next big show, the next affair, the next spotlit performance – evokes its own begrudging sympathy... even if it doesn’t make him any more likable. |
