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ON THIS MONTH: FILM O Lucky Man! A film to watch and watch again Comedy writer Graham Duff tells me he’s seen the Lindsay Anderson movie O Lucky Man! every year of his life. “No, I’m exaggerating. But I first watched it when I was 18, and I’ve seen it over 30 times since.” Duff is 54. The film is three hours long. The obvious question is: ‘why?’ “It’s difficult to say…” he responds, and then spends the next twenty minutes singing the film’s praises. O Lucky Man! is coming to the Depot as part of Brighton’s Cinecity film festival, and Duff will be there to introduce it. The film is part of a trilogy of movies directed by Anderson, written by David Sherwin, and starring Malcolm McDowell as Michael Travis. “We first meet him as a schoolboy in If…. (1968), in which he’s the leader of a revolution in his public school; the third film is Britannia Hospital (1982). All three are political, but not in a lecturing way. They parody the left as much as the right. What O Lucky Man! is about, more than anything else, is the universality of corruption. But it’s also very funny and playful.” “I’ve learnt a lot from the film,” he continues. “There’s a real sense of caring about humanity, but in an utterly unsentimental way.” Unsentimental, and unconventional. “Sherwin skilfully flits in and out of genres. I mean there’s one scene – where a man’s head has been transplanted onto a pig’s body – that’s straight out of a horror movie. And the fact that it’s in the middle of a political satire makes it all the more horrifying.” The film has a vast cast of familiar names and faces, including Ralph Richardson, Helen Mirren, Arthur Lowe, James Bolan, Dandy Nichols, Brian Glover, Bill Owen and Geoffrey Palmer. “Many of them play more than one character, which is a very Brechtian trait.” Another influence on Anderson, suggests Duff, is Jean-Luc Godard. “Alan Price and his band play songs throughout the film, eventually becoming part of the story. There are definite parallels with Godard’s One Plus One. In fact, along with Derek Jarman, Anderson is one of the few British film directors to have common currency with European art house cinema. In some ways, Anderson was a British Luis Bunuel.” “Anderson was a big fan of Price. Having his music through the film was a populist gesture, on Anderson’s part – a way of bathing radical, leftfield ideas in a popular light. He wanted the film to be for everyone.” O Lucky Man!, however, wasn’t a great success at the box office, despite being Warner Brothers’ big hope for 1973. “Perhaps it was too long; perhaps it was difficult for people to categorise”, says Duff. It has since, however, been recognised by many modern critics as a work of genius. A film, perhaps, to be watched over and over. “You know what,” concludes Duff, “I notice something new nearly every time I watch it.” Alex Leith O Lucky Man! is on at the Depot, 11th <strong>November</strong>. cine-city.co.uk 51