starring: Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Arthur Lowe

directed by: Lindsay Anderson

Memorial-SAM Films, 1973
 

starring: Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Arthur Lowe

directed by: Lindsay Anderson

the plot: Young coffee salesman Mick Travis (McDowell) inherits a huge assignment for territory in the north of England and takes off to make his fortune. Along the way, he is seduced by women, mistakenly captured as a spy by the government, beds the daughter of a millionaire magnate, rises to the top and crashes to the bottom. Near the end, he auditions for a film role and is asked by the director to smile. Mick insists adamantly there is nothing to smile about. He is slapped hard across the face with the script. He smiles.

why it’s good: Make no mistake—this is a horror film. It’s also an accomplished satire on modern institutions, corporate capitalism, medical research for profit and clandestine governments, one of the finest of its type ever committed to celluloid. After starring in director Anderson’s “If….” (1968) and Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” (1971), Malcolm McDowell proposed a film based on his experiences as a coffee salesman in the north of England, where people only drink tea. McDowell collaborated with screenwriter David Sherwin, and the result was a picaresque Voltarian “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Patricia (21-year-old Helen Mirren), the child of an evil corporate swine, tells Mick his ambition to become rich and powerful is “old-fashioned,” and Mick is wounded and confused. He becomes the fall guy in a big business African fraud scheme and does five years in prison. He emerges spiritually transformed and ends up auditioning for a part in a film—directed by Lindsay Anderson. This movie is epic and hilarious, and its sterling cast impresses in multiple roles (the marvelous Arthur Lowe won a British Oscar for his performances). It’s also appropriately disturbing. A graphic torture sequence, a machete amputation, shots of chemical warfare victims, and the shocking result of an animal/human transplant experiment shake the viewer from complacency. Running almost three hours, the film features several fine songs by keyboardist Alan Price and his band (they also double as actors in several scenes). Anderson was capable of calm, understated work such as “In Celebration” (1975) and “The Whales of August” (1987), but it was in sticking his boot up the arse of the establishment that he was at his best. He and McDowell were devoted to each other, and McDowell’s one-man live reminiscence of his mentor in “Never Apologize” (2008) is worth a screening for any film fan.

why you should own it: This nearly forty-year-old film is more timely today than it was on its initial release. Unchecked governments and police, health care for profit, and the cesspool of pure capitalism were poisoning the world in 1973, and they luxuriously continue to do so today. The term “savage indictment” is now a trifle cliché, but this film is the real thing. The Warner Bros. DVD has fine commentary by McDowell, writer Sherwin and composer Price. It also includes a marvelous documentary on McDowell’s distinguished and unusual career.