Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966)

Karel Reisz directed "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" which people went to see at the cinema in droves, and was enjoyed by many working class folk. Karel Reisz also directed "Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment" which far fewer people went to see at the cinema, and I feel was much less appealing to the working class viewer. I suspect that those who did see it and found it a hoot, where most likely to be middle class lefties and students. Because I am neither a middle class lefty or have ever been a student, I didn't find it a hoot at all. In fact I found David Warner's character Morgan, extremely irritating and annoying, him being a grown man acting like a badly behaved child. Although, in todays world grown men acting like badly behaved children are sadly accepted by society and are not deemed to require treatment. The Inbetweeners for example. I watched Morgan again recently, and it was nice to see Irene Handl and Arthur Mullard. I like the nostalgia of 1960's British films (even rubbish ones like this)and enjoyed seeing a youthful fresh faced Vanessa Redgrave. This lady was the reason I took out a short lived subscription of "The Workers Revolutionary Party" newspaper, way back in the early 1970's. I always intended to go to one of their meetings in the hope I might meet her, but never ever got around to attending one. Morgan was certainly not for me. If I have to watch so called slapstick comedy such as this (minus the political stuff) then give me a Norman Wisdom film anytime.

Offbeat director Karel Reisz was behind the camera for some noteworthy films in his day including "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" and "The French Lieutenant's Woman." Unfortunately, his 1966 movie "Morgan!" isn't one of them. Its threadbare one-joke plot runs thin after a half hour and all that's left is some surrealism regarding the Marxists and a British fellow with a gorilla fixation. A young David Warner plays the title character. He's a fragile "artist" ready for a strait-jacket who's attempting to win back his ex-wife (Vanessa Redgrave before she became a communist) by acting like the lunatic he is. The highlight of the film is when he crashes her wedding ceremony (dressed up like a gorilla) to stiff-upper-lip Robert Stephens while their party guests have a collective fit. He then hops onto a motorbike while his costume's on fire and drives himself straight into the Thames. From there, the film quickly becomes a baffling amalgam of some Leninist babble coupled with a nonsensical and very staged mock execution. We then see Morgan led away and reappearing in an asylum for the insane tending to his "hammer and sickle" garden. His ex-wife also shows up (and pregnant) but it all may be just a figment of his lively imagination. How Ms. Redgrave secured an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress with this performance is a great Hollywood mystery that will never be solved. As for David Warner, he went on to a solid career, mostly as a character actor, and has carried on admirably in his profession despite this role. Needless to say, "Morgan!" did not make him an international star. Irene Handl is also in the cast as Morgan's mixed-up leftist/communist mother. With her parental guidance, it's no wonder he goes off the deep end. Maybe the point was that you have to be really crazy to be a communist. Viewers will find that you also have to be half-mad to sit through this entire movie. As for the "Swinging London" backdrop, it's about as exciting as Fresno on a bad day. "Morgan!" is a dated embarrassment to be seen by the curious only.

Boy, did I love this movie in the Sixties when I was a left-wing radical college student. Everything about goofy Morgan (David Warner) was funny or likable or just plain cool, in a weird sort of way. This movie was so '60s with its mores and humor. If they had VHS tapes back then, I would have bought this in a heartbeat.When I began seriously collecting movies in the mid '90s, I was excited to see this again. Wow, what a disappointment. What was so great back then now looks so incredibly stupid. The film was so bad, and Warner was so annoying (hardly 'fab' anymore), I couldn't finish the film. I couldn't believe how incredibly inane this was and how much I used to like it. Like another '60s period piece, "Easy Rider," it's amazing how differently we see things depending on our age and/or how we have changed culturally, politically or religiously. I wonder if Warner looks back at this film and cringes, too.

Say "1960's British comedy movie" and already some people are thinking of impossibly mod dialogue, dated images and an obsession with pop and quick sex. This movie shouldn't work but it does. Try pitching a concept of an insane young communist obsessed with gorillas and unable to come to terms with the break up of his marriage to today's Hollywood executives and you'd get thrown out of their offices. But it is genuinely funny and sad, it's well directed and you can't speak highly enough of David Warner in the lead role.I've always thought that Warner is at his best when his seemingly unsympathetic characters engender some sympathy. The retarded man in "Straw Dogs", the jaded Captain in "Cross of Iron", the put apon conscript in "The Bofors Gun" to name but a few. Morgan is his ultimate portrayal of this type of character.