This sprawling surrealist masterpeice finally gets a DVD release - on 2 discks to boot!

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7592 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-05-19
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Formats: PAL, Special Edition
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 169 minutes

Synopsis
Lindsay Anderson, working again with Malcolm McDowell and Robert Sherwin, continues his comic comment on corruption in British society when Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell), the school boy from IF. . ., sets out, like a modern Candide, to make his way in the business world. Anderson stretches the boundaries of cinema with an eclectic use of movies within movies, silent-film-style title cards, surreal fantasies, actors playing multiple parts, and a live soundtrack. Alan Price appears on screen singing several songs. In the lyrics to one song he sings, 'Someone has to win in the human race, if it isn't you, then it has to be me', which is thematically linked to Mick's rise and fall in his career journey from lowly coffee salesman to assistant to Sir James Burgess (Ralph Richardson), the most evil man in the world.
This is a very fast-paced, wildly creative, cinematic tour-de-force that set the standard for expanding the boundaries of British cinema in the early 1970s. McDowell, who is on screen in almost every scene, keeps the bizarre situations from overwhelming the human emotions with a marvellously expressive performance. In the end, with a sly Zen message, Anderson tells us that in a crazy world we can only look within ourselves for a reason to smile.

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Customer Reviews

Finally!
The DVD format is 10 years old - and finally we're getting a release of this, following on from Paramount's release of If... and the age-old release from Cinema Club of Britannia Hospital we can have a complete Mick Travis collection :-)

Of the trilogy of Anderson's films I find this (the middle work) the oddest, and the possibly the best - but it's so hard to judge between masterpieces.

The film follows Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) and his surreal adventure through '70s England along with the Alan Price's band that provide the music commentaries in the traditions of a Greek Chorus.
O Lucky Man! is simply one vast, weird, intelligent and funny movie. It provides some great food for thought on survival-of-the-fittest style capitalism, through Mick Travis's increasingly unexpected adventures

O Lucky Man! deserves to be recognized as one of the great films of the 1970s, and perhaps of all time.

An enduring classic now with added nostalgia
Voltairian oddysey, road movie, surrealist fantasy, anti-capitalist satire, this world class British film is all of these and of course, more. Helped by 35 years of nostalgia for the way things were before the press decided to become public judges, much of what is lambasted by dir. Anderson here looks familiar because of what we know from the papers and the TV. The general themes here of ruthless ambition, class distinction, plutocracy v poverty, institutionalised corruption and greed, and obviously hypocrisy, are probably better known now to a wiser, more cynical public. Of course Anderson did his bit with this great film to try and make it better known. This bold critique on the wiley old ways of the world looks as relevant now as it did then. The vices pilloried here are still with us, and the themes are still relevant. Of course the depiction here is fantastical but that's what makes this film a great piece of art.

Some elements of the film do look very clanky now, the use of sub-titles and old film clips, for example, and one or two scenes look very much of the day, but this is a clever and rakingly ambitious film, and even satirises film making in one passage. It rounds off his previous satire very well, and perhaps just as importantly now to a nostalgia loving British public, it records some memorable aspects of life before The Age of PC, and has some damn fine actors in their prime. McDowell is amazing once again, perfect for the role, with his everyman looks and personalty, and the ever gorgeous Helen Mirren is stunningly sexy and youthful looking here. Add the decent, very English score from The Alan Price Set and what you have is an enduring masterpiece of real old fashioned film making. Magnif!

A most excellent sprawling epic of a film
There is a fashion at present to make films that go on and on and on. There are example where this expanse is used to good effect, such as the Lord of the Rings films and the opposite, such as the latter Pirates of the Carrebean films. This is an early example of a long film and it pulls it off with a swagger.

The second in a trilogy of films made by the late great Lindsey Anderson, O Lucky Man plots (albeit somewhat surrealistically) the progressions through life in the early 1970s (this was made in 1973, and boy, does it look it!); it is almost a kind of Pilgrim's Progress/ Road to Damascus tale, and is highly entertaining. Some have said they felt it flagged towards the end; I question whether the film flags or the viewer, as it is nearly 3 hours long, but to edit it would be to ruin it. It's sprawling aspect is one of it's selling points.

It has many stars other than the wonderful Malcolm MdDowell, such as Arthur Lowe, Jeremy Bulloch and Helen Mirren. The music is supplied by Alan Price and he also stars in the film as the leader of the band who supply the music to the film. At points still shocking (a rare thing for a film so old), at others laugh out loud funny and at others hard to fathom, this is a treat for anyone who likes the slightly odd, cult films from this period or the open minded.