The Mick Travis Trilogy : 50th Anniversary Celebration
Jan 27, 2018 4:07:18 GMT
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Post by petrolino on Jan 27, 2018 4:07:18 GMT
Malcolm McDowell : The Great Pretender
"Like his claim to dig the music of the Smiths, David Cameron's professed admiration for the Lindsay Anderson film If … is either a fantastically canny attempt to deflect attention from his unswervingly patrician background or an act of cultural self-delusion on a massive scale. I incline towards the latter. If … is without doubt the flag-bearer for the British end of the cinematic counter-culture in the late 60s, with its incendiary, anti-establishment finale of schoolboys machine-gunning their teachers, but it's also a film that could only have been made by products of the public-school system. Screenwriter David Sherwin – he originated the project with another writer, John Howlett, who subsequently backed out – went to Tonbridge School; Anderson himself was a pupil at Cheltenham College, where If … was largely filmed. If … caught the flavour of the times when it was screened, winning the top prize at Cannes in 1969, and even if you aren't a public schoolboy with a grudge against your upbringing, there's no doubting the film's power as a metaphor for the ossification of the upper echelons of British society, and the desire in many quarters to do something dramatic about it. But the film also contains an ambiguous affection for what Anderson termed the "strange sub-world" of the public school, "with its own peculiar laws, distortions, brutalities, loves".
- Andrew Pulver, The Guardian
"Like his claim to dig the music of the Smiths, David Cameron's professed admiration for the Lindsay Anderson film If … is either a fantastically canny attempt to deflect attention from his unswervingly patrician background or an act of cultural self-delusion on a massive scale. I incline towards the latter. If … is without doubt the flag-bearer for the British end of the cinematic counter-culture in the late 60s, with its incendiary, anti-establishment finale of schoolboys machine-gunning their teachers, but it's also a film that could only have been made by products of the public-school system. Screenwriter David Sherwin – he originated the project with another writer, John Howlett, who subsequently backed out – went to Tonbridge School; Anderson himself was a pupil at Cheltenham College, where If … was largely filmed. If … caught the flavour of the times when it was screened, winning the top prize at Cannes in 1969, and even if you aren't a public schoolboy with a grudge against your upbringing, there's no doubting the film's power as a metaphor for the ossification of the upper echelons of British society, and the desire in many quarters to do something dramatic about it. But the film also contains an ambiguous affection for what Anderson termed the "strange sub-world" of the public school, "with its own peculiar laws, distortions, brutalities, loves".
- Andrew Pulver, The Guardian
'If...' (1968)
"When we meet, in a lavish London hotel room, Charles Shyer is cutting a vaguely eccentric figure. Looking like a cuddly Steven Spielberg, the 63-year-old writer-director is perched on a silken sofa, quizzically eyeing the mountainous sorbet on the table before him. It's a tableau that wouldn't look entirely out of place in O Lucky Man!, the 1973 film for which the word "eccentric" might have been invented, and one that Shyer adores. It was the second of British director Lindsay Anderson's "Mick" trilogy (sandwiched between 1968's If.... and 1982's Britannia Hospital), so-called because they all centre on a character called Michael Travis, played by one of cinema's most dangerous cherubs, Malcolm McDowell. Like a modern-day Pilgrim's Progress or Candide, the film is a bizarre, burlesque epic detailing the young coffee-salesman's adventures as he crosses Britain vainly attempting to peddle his wares. Like all Anderson's work, it's also socially and politically charged, with the director jabbing an allegorical, anti-consumerist finger at the establishment. But it's the film's wild sense of fun that appeals to Shyer. "It seemed to me one of the first rock and roll movies," says the engaging Angelino, "so completely, shockingly original, and I love that about it. Malcolm is so good, and you know he's heading for disaster, one time after another – you feel like grabbing him by the lapels and warning him, 'Don't do this!' "There are so many scenes that are indelible, like the famous one in the research institute where he pulls back the sheet and finds a man who's had his head grafted on to a pig's body. "You think, where did that idea come from? David Sherwin's screenplay is brilliant, and I think the combination of him, Malcolm, and Lindsay created this strange serendipity." Shyer himself is currently in the news for his remake of Lewis Gilbert's 1966 favourite Alfie, which opened yesterday. Starring Jude Law (in the Michael Caine role) and Sienna Miller, it's a sprightly addition to a slate that already includes some of modern Hollywood's most gleefully frothy romps (Smokey and the Bandit, Private Benjamin), though nothing – as Shyer admits – quite as way-out as O Lucky Man!."
- Mark Monahan, The Telegraph
'If... '
'O Lucky Man!' (1973)
"Malcolm McDowell is an original, he's not like anyone else, and he's become more original as he's got older. I know he lives in California and he is happy there, but he has not become a complete Californian. He maintains one foot in and one foot outside. That way, he can do whatever he wants to do, which is very smart of him."
- Stephen Frears
'The Immigrant' - Neil Sedaka
'Britannia Hospital' (1982)
"When we meet, in a lavish London hotel room, Charles Shyer is cutting a vaguely eccentric figure. Looking like a cuddly Steven Spielberg, the 63-year-old writer-director is perched on a silken sofa, quizzically eyeing the mountainous sorbet on the table before him. It's a tableau that wouldn't look entirely out of place in O Lucky Man!, the 1973 film for which the word "eccentric" might have been invented, and one that Shyer adores. It was the second of British director Lindsay Anderson's "Mick" trilogy (sandwiched between 1968's If.... and 1982's Britannia Hospital), so-called because they all centre on a character called Michael Travis, played by one of cinema's most dangerous cherubs, Malcolm McDowell. Like a modern-day Pilgrim's Progress or Candide, the film is a bizarre, burlesque epic detailing the young coffee-salesman's adventures as he crosses Britain vainly attempting to peddle his wares. Like all Anderson's work, it's also socially and politically charged, with the director jabbing an allegorical, anti-consumerist finger at the establishment. But it's the film's wild sense of fun that appeals to Shyer. "It seemed to me one of the first rock and roll movies," says the engaging Angelino, "so completely, shockingly original, and I love that about it. Malcolm is so good, and you know he's heading for disaster, one time after another – you feel like grabbing him by the lapels and warning him, 'Don't do this!' "There are so many scenes that are indelible, like the famous one in the research institute where he pulls back the sheet and finds a man who's had his head grafted on to a pig's body. "You think, where did that idea come from? David Sherwin's screenplay is brilliant, and I think the combination of him, Malcolm, and Lindsay created this strange serendipity." Shyer himself is currently in the news for his remake of Lewis Gilbert's 1966 favourite Alfie, which opened yesterday. Starring Jude Law (in the Michael Caine role) and Sienna Miller, it's a sprightly addition to a slate that already includes some of modern Hollywood's most gleefully frothy romps (Smokey and the Bandit, Private Benjamin), though nothing – as Shyer admits – quite as way-out as O Lucky Man!."
- Mark Monahan, The Telegraph
'If... '
'O Lucky Man!' (1973)
"Malcolm McDowell is an original, he's not like anyone else, and he's become more original as he's got older. I know he lives in California and he is happy there, but he has not become a complete Californian. He maintains one foot in and one foot outside. That way, he can do whatever he wants to do, which is very smart of him."
- Stephen Frears
'The Immigrant' - Neil Sedaka
'Britannia Hospital' (1982)
"Malcolm McDowell is the unique English theatre actor, born in Leeds, raised in Liverpool, who's been appearing regularly on screens for 50 years now, yet reportedly turned down a CBE national honour in 1984, and a knighthood honour in the year of 1995. Albert Finney, born in Salford, turned down a knighthood too. But why?"
- Terry Hale, 'You Rang M'Lord?'
Gary Oldman meets Malcolm McDowell
Masters of Malevolence : Harold Pinter's The Collection with Alan Bates, Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Laurence Olivier
- Terry Hale, 'You Rang M'Lord?'
Gary Oldman meets Malcolm McDowell
Masters of Malevolence : Harold Pinter's The Collection with Alan Bates, Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Laurence Olivier
