Okay so I watched it today. Given the advance word here, I was prepared for it to be pretty grim and a bit of a slog and I wasn't disappointed. It did suck me in a bit by the end, but up until about 2/3 of the way through I was itching to turn it off, alternately bored and filled with dread of some awful scenario involving fools being made of selves (first Olivier's character, then his dad--I was relieved when the latter dropped dead instead. I can't stand cringe moments in movies).
Some random thoughts:
--It took me forever to sort out who all the characters were and their relation to each other. I still haven't quite figured out whether or which of Jean and her two brothers were full siblings or half siblings.
--The teddy boy thing was already going in 1956? And they had American style rock music in England? They barely had it in the US at that point... I saw it as set in 1960 based on hair, clothing and mores etc. (and mis-remembered the Suez crisis as 1959) til fairly far in when there was a 1956 date.
--It had the same problem that almost every movie based on a play has for me--it felt too confined to the sets, too "stagey" and the acting felt the same way, particularly Olivier's wife (another character it too me forever to figure out who she was supposed to be in relation to everyone else) in her drunken breakdown scenes, and Olivier in his near monologue on stage with Jean near the end.
--Joan Plowright has always looked like a nice soft middle aged lady, even when she was young.
--It's very ironic to me that Olivier and Plowright ended up marrying, after seeing this movie, their relationship in the movie and his character's issues with women.
--I never knew how to feel about Jean's fiance Graham. In the first sequence he was in he seemed like an upper class (or upper middle class) twit type who didn't "get it" with her. Later, he seemed like a different person.
--It does do a good job of getting across an idea that at that point in time many British felt like Britain's day was over and done with, and that it was a dead country and the best thing to do was to go somewhere else like Canada or Africa. There's a big point made about Archie's allegiance to a quickly dying entertainment format (music hall) and his refusal to leave England and start over somewhere else even when that would clearly be the only option for him not to go to jail.
--I am trying to figure out if there's any juxtaposition implied about Jean's apparent sexual relationship with her fiance and Archie's way of doing things. Is she repeating his patterns or she freer and less hypocritical being the younger generation? Or am I reading too much in?
--Best moment in the movie: when Archie is on the phone at the theatre being given what-for by the mother of his new girl, and all the rest of the cast of the show is gathering and knowing that something big and bad is happening.
--Was the rather hard brunette in the show a female impersonator? I kept going back and forth but pretty much decided she was a drag queen in the number about being surrounded by the girls.
--Along the same lines, were we supposed to get that the son who wasn't in the army was gay? He had that vibe and talked about working an extra job at the same theatre that in the next scene Archie was making a joke that implied that theatre's business was mainly gay (something about dropping one's hat and kicking it down the street rather than bending over for it in front of the theatre). Or am I reading into it?