This is the first in a series of posts on Lindsay Anderson’s masterpiece, O Lucky Man!
The other night, I revisited O Lucky Man!, courtesy of the recent DVD release, seeing it for the first time in its proper aspect ratio. While it isn’t so readily apparent in pan-and-scan versions of the film, Anderson’s subtle and very specific framings — which are often composed of medium and long shots — are as integral to the film as its many outrageous moments among its side characters. The coffee salesman and former if… revolutionary Mick Travis (played wonderfully by Malcolm McDowell) is often framed in the center of a tableau, and this positioning foreshadows Travis’s later victimization by political forces, both left and right.
Travis’s first appearance comes at the end of a slow pan, where we see Travis in the middle of an orientation meeting at a coffee company. He’s paying very close attention to a supervisor who is training many salesmen for possible lucre on the road. He has a clipboard under his left arm. Travis’s right arm grasps a pillar, his bicep (and thus his strength) interestingly occluded by the beam, connected to an unspecified part of the corporate machinery that keeps the factory in motion. In addition to this conformist image standing in sharp contrast to if…‘s violent revolutionary, it’s suggested by this establishing shot that this Everyman figure is drawn moth-like to the machinery. Indeed, only minutes later, we see Travis calculating on a piece of paper just what kind of money he can make on the road. From the protagonist’s introduction, the imperialism observed in the film’s black-and-white prologue is indeed reflected by modern forces. And this is just the first of Anderson and screenwriter David Sherwin’s onslaughts upon contemporary culture.
But what of the film’s opening title sequence just before Travis’s introduction? The film features numerous interstitial interruptions from Alan Price and his band, playing songs that often reflect and respond to Travis’s adventures. The effect is certainly reminiscent of a Greek chorus responding to the events on a stage. But since this is the film medium, there’s something fundamentally more surreal going on. The band also appears inside the movie’s narrative midway through the movie, as Travis flees from Professor Millar’s hospital. So the film’s technical enablers have just as sizable a role on Travis’s predicament as the forces of the world.
In the above image, we see Lindsay Anderson, clad throughout the film in a black leather jacket and a red shirt (perhaps just as important a sartorial choice as Travis’s protective gold suit?), going over the script with Price during a guitar solo. (The film’s hefty script is also used by Anderson in the film’s closing moments to strike Travis.)
You can find this shot at the 3:25 mark. It’s a roughly 220 degree dolly shot around Price and his keyboard that suggests that Anderson not only has no problems crossing the axis, but that the director (and the script) does indeed have a hand in the forthcoming events. But it’s also worth observing that whereas the camera remains stationary on its tripod in relation to Travis, this is not quite the case within the free-floating kinetic safety of the recording studio where Alan Price and company play their music. (However, there still remain tangible connections between the studio and Travis’s narrative, which I will go into very soon.)
In a future post, I’ll go into greater length about how the film willfully (and often defiantly) flaunts these fascinating cinematic techniques. (The film’s frequent cutaways to static blackness, for example, suggest imagined moments to be filled in by the film’s audience.)
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
I thought I was the only one who knew about O Lucky Man! One more reason to love this blog.
If you have a friend on whom you think you can rely, you are a lucky man.