Lindsay Anderson is an odd figure among British film directors - he's well known, has inspired lots of critical writing, but didn't make many films and doesn't seem to enjoy a unanimously good reputation as a director. I guess he wrote lots about cinema and himself, and films like this gave critics plenty of write about.
This is an insane movie which is unlike any I've seen. It goes for three hours, is full of theatrical devices (actors doubling up, a Greek chorus), in jokes (Anderson appears as himself at the end and casts Malcolm McDowell in a movie "O Lucky Man"), stylistic devices (use of titles, black and white and silent sequences, a white actor "blacks up" to play an African), story shifts (one minute McDowell is a coffee salesman, then a prisoner, then a patient, then an assistant to a rich man), broad satire (judges being spanked, people turning into sheep), endless targets (big business, dictators, medicine, capitalism).
It's a big, sprawling, indulgent, ambitious mess. I can understand why people hated it but its ambition and novelty is endearing in an era of homogenised theatre. The jokes could have been better - heck, the whole script could have been better, and in no universe is the idea of Alan Price singing songs that spell out the subtext a good idea. But I took to the film - I went with it and enjoyed it. Wonderful support cast including Rachel Roberts, Helen Mirren (young and lovely), Ralph Richardson. Might have felt different if I'd plucked money down in the cinema, though.
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