TV REVIEW : OLIVIER DELIVERS IN ‘EBONY TOWER’

Lord Laurence Olivier, seen in a small role in the premiere of “Lost Empires” on “Masterpiece Theatre” last week, returns to PBS tonight with a much meatier part in “The Ebony Tower,” a 90-minute film about the clash of two painters. At 79, he can still deliver. It is a performance to be savored.

Sporting a slightly rakish beard, Olivier gives us a penetrating glimpse of old age, at times energetic, proud and content, at other times feeble, crotchety and scared--scared of being alone, of being dependent, of being forsaken by a changing world with which he cannot keep up.

But old age is only one of the things that “The Ebony Tower” is about. Adapted by John Mortimer from the 1974 novel by John Fowles, it is an intriguing story about art, the relationship of the artist to his work and the conflict between emotions and the intellect.

(The presentation on PBS’ “Great Performances” will be seen at 8 p.m. on Channel 24 and at 9 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15. It also airs Saturday at 8 p.m. on Channel 50.)

Olivier plays Henry Breasley, a long-prominent painter who has taken to living in seclusion with two young women (Greta Scacchi and Toyah Willcox) on a French farm. There they are visited by another artist, David Williams (Roger Rees), who also works as a critic and has come to write about Breasley.

The two men are opposites: in age, life style, temperament and artistic approach--Breasley being a staunch believer in realism, Williams preferring the abstract, which the older man dismisses as geometry. “Better a bloody bomb than Jackson Pollock!” he curses.

Their differences are only accented by the presence of Scacchi’s alluring, puzzling art student character, who caters to Breasley yet is drawn to Williams. In the end she must choose between them--and what they represent.

Directed by Robert Knights and produced for Granada Television by Roy Roberts, “The Ebony Tower” draws you in with quiet, understated intelligence. Like an effective painting, it plays out its conflicts subtly and enigmatically.