One of the first films of the breakthrough Angry Young Man movement in Britain, which encompassed Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Room at the Top, and John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer is also based on a play by Osborne. William K. Everson comments:
“Not only does this now little-seen film take one's breath away with its array of acting talent - Laurence Olivier, Alan Bates, Daniel Massey, Albert Finney, Shirley Ann Field, Roger Livesey - but it is now a much more understandable film. Twenty years ago we didn't always comprehend just why Britain's ‘Angry Young Men' were so angry. Problems and conditions in present-day Britain show that their anger was prophetic, and their frustration well-founded, while the film's (and play's) method of juxtaposing a fading comedian with a faltering and failing Empire carries even more poignancy and topicality today. Olivier's performance is one of his best, and prior to the showing of the film we will be screening an excerpt from He Found a Star (1941) starring the mediocre comic Vic Oliver, on whose persona and mannerisms Olivier patterned his characterisation.”