Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment
1966
Directed by Karel Reisz
Screenplay by David Mercer
Produced by Leon Clore
Music by John Dankworth
CAST
David Warner – Morgan Delt
Vanessa Redgrave – Leonie Delt
Robert Stephens – Napier
Irene Handl – Mrs Delt, Morgan’s mother
Bernard Bresslaw – Policeman
Arthur Mullard – Wally
Newton Blick – Mr Henderson
Nan Munro- Mrs Henderson
Peter Collingwood- Geoffrey
Graham Crowden – Counsel
John Garrie- Tipstaff
John Rae – Judge
Angus MacKay- Best Man
The 1960s retrospective series continued …
David Warner as Hamlet in 1965
April 1966 first UK release. It was Vanessa Redgrave’s first leading role. It was David Warner’s first leading role. It was also David Warner’s last leading role according to the online reviews (Not true), not that he’s ever stopped doing major supporting roles. Was David Warner hot in 1966? He had just appeared in Peter Hall’s 1965 Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Karen, my viewing companion, saw him and maintains that none of the dozen major Hamlets she has seen since have measured up to him. Karel Reisz was well aware of this and twice has David Warner placed next to a skull in the film. The first is a whole skeleton,. but the second just a skull on a shelf (I failed to capture it!)
Morgan. Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well?
Vanessa Redgrave and Robert Stephens both had a high stage reputation at the time too. Never mind, Karen remembers being disappointed by Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment.
In April 1966, my then girlfriend was a prospective drama student too (doing the same auditions as Karen did a year or two later), and was desperate to see David Warner in Morgan. We knew the script was by a playwright, David Mercer, and we knew it was based on his stage play. That was an extra incentive. I remember how puzzled we were as we emerged. It’s like buying an album by a favourite artist, sure you’re going to love it, and try as you might … you really don’t. (Step forward The Band Cahoots, The Beatles Let It Be, Bob Dylan’s Saved. The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street – yes, I know many critics rate in their best. It’s dull and repetitive!)
I know exactly when I next saw it. 14th February 1970. University of East Anglia, late night showing in their three day “Valentine Weekend” festival. After the music, which was The Keef Hartley Band supported by Memphis Index. Probably 11.30 p.m. Oh, how late we stayed up in those days. I first met my girlfriend for the rest of my days at East Anglia in the queue going in to see Morgan. I recall we bonded by commenting a lot during it in sarcastic whispers. No, it still didn’t work.
We’ve seen it at least once since on TV.
Part of the reason for this series of reviews lies in writing novels set in the 1960s, currently I’m working on one set in 1966, and I want to see films made in the era, not films about the era. Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment is a classic of early ‘Swinging London’ films. At the same time, I’ve been reading Jon Savage’s 1966.
Posters at the time trumpeted the film as The cinema’s wildest sex comedy. It wasn’t very sexy, and just seemed to be trying too hard to be funny, which was accentuated by having three very broad well-known comic actors in it … Irene Handl, Bernard “I only asked” Bresslaw from The Army Game and Arthur Mullard.
Jon Savage sees it differently.
As the film progresses, you begin to realise that Morgan is not being melodramatic, but actually offering a factual, accurate record of a breakdown as it is happening. As he says to Napier, “You can’t count on me being civilised – I’ve lost the thread.” To depict this disintegration – or is it a flight into clarity? – Reisz begins to intercut natural history footage into Morgan’s reveries … his dreams are becoming nightmares. As he admits: “Nothing in this world seems to live up to my best fantasies.” Then his madness overwhelms him.… He imagines he is, like Trotsky or any other enemy of the people, about to be executed: powerless, he is hoisted up by a crane in the straitjacket he has long feared. Fantasy is intercut with reality in a disturbing climax.
(Guardian article 2011, Jon Savage)
So we set out to re-watch in the light of this rather than a whacky sex comedy.
We did the sum it up in three at the end. Karen said ‘David Warner brilliant and subtle. Vanessa Redgrave absolutely enchanting. Direction jerky.’
Vanessa Redgrave as Leonie
The direction? Well, the intercut nature images could be smoother (though the super-imposed giraffes worked) and while wildly revolutionary in 1966, are a cliché now. Reisz uses speeded up motion to give a silent film look to a couple of Morgan’s capers and didn’t capture the mood (and anyway, silent film is speeded up because it was shot at 16 frames a second, but by post war was often shown at 24 frames a second on film and 25 frames on TV!). We noted that David Warner seemed to do all (or most) of his own physical stunts, but i’d be very surprised if the film company’s insurers let him do the gorilla suit stuff.
The gorilla on a bike: one stunt I assume David Warner would not have done
So, whacky comedy, psychological exploration or … to me it is foremost that old English obsession about social class that dominates the film. Morgan is the son of communists. His mum runs a greasy spoon caff in the East End. Leonie (in 1966 speak) is a posh bird. So 60s London. The creative blokes … Scousers (The Beatles), Geordies (The Animals), Estuary (the Stones). Then you’ve got all the Cockney actors (a lot of people don’t know that), photographers and celebrity hairdressers. New models like Twiggy. They’re meeting the West End wealthy, the ex-public school pop group managers, the effete blokes (like Napier, played by Robert Stephens) and posh rich birds. The world was turning fast. Maybe you have to be chippy (chip on shoulder) to get it, but working class and lower-middle class kids (I count myself in the second) really noticed that divide, and social mobility, due to meritocracy in the post-war grammar school systems was promoting my lot into the arena previously held exclusively by public school types. Why, even the prime minister, Harold Wilson, was a grammar school boy, as was Margaret Thatcher later (well, not a boy, but very male). This is it, we thought. We’ll never again be ruled by Old Etonians who went to Oxford … how wrong can you be?
It went beyond the extremes of rock star /actor / painter / photographer / writer versus snooty girls from Chelsea or Knightsbridge. There was a strong gender divide beyond the class divisions. In 1966, on a gap year, my job in a museum was paid the same as the men in their 40s, 50s and 60s … £10.50 a week. In 1968 we tried to get jobs in London in warehouses and van driving – in my memory about £12 to £15 a week. But secretarial jobs for girls started at £20 minimum, £30 with shorthand … and don’t forget, in 1968 no one typed their own letters or answered their own phones. Girls could afford to live in a shared flat in central London. Ordinary blokes couldn’t. We’d drive along Kings Road in a group van staring at the gorgeous beautifully-dressed girls everywhere. You needed money to dress like that, let alone have your hair done. Scruffy Morgan v elegant Leonie.
Karel Reisz uses sound in a party scene to hammer home the divide with an enormous whittering of Advanced RP voices.
THE PLOT
Leonie (Vanessa Redgrave) is divorcing her failed painter husband Morgan (David Warner) in order to marry Charles Napier, a rich art gallery owner (Robert Stephens).
Morgan was brought up as a communist by his mum (Irene Handl) and dad (deceased). The Red Flag in several different arrangements is a runnine piece of theme music.
Morgan (David Warner) and Leonie (Vanessa Redgrave)
Morgan is a fantasist, always drifting into reveries, and is determined to win Leonie back. He refuses to accept the divorce, and Leonie still fancies him, which becomes clear. He visits, she takes a bath …
Leonie and Napier (Robert Stephens)
He decides on some stunts like putting a skeleton in the bed she is to share with Charles Napier. Then he decides to blow up the bed, an attempt foiled when Leonie’s mum sits on it instead. He walks around with a stuffed gorilla, visits a real gorilla in the zoo and woos Leonie with gorilla chest pounding – to which she responds.
Morgan meets the policeman (Bernard Bresslaw)
Morgan is living in a van outside her apartment, and encounters a policeman (Bernard Bresslaw) who will reappear. He has a poster of Trotsky, his hero, on the side.
Morgan visits his mum’s caff. Irene Handl has some of the best speeches in the entire film, e.g.:
Mrs Delt: Your dad was onto you the day he drowned those kittens. You knew what would happen to them if he gave them away. But no, oh no, drowning was cruel you said. Your dad said to me that day after. He says, you know what you’ve done, don’t you. Given birth to a bleedin’ liberal.
Regarding Karl Marx … Morgan and his mum
A key scene is where Morgan goes with his mum to Highgate cemetery for their annual visit to lay flowers on Karl Marx’s tomb. This is the line that made me laugh out loud. The incomparable Irene Handl is Mrs Delt and it’s her delivery:
Irene Handl as Morgan’s mum. Highgate cemetery, by the tomb of Karl Marx
MRS DELT: Your dad used to love coming here … You know he wanted to shoot the Royal Family?
Morgan enlists the help of his mum’s boyfriend, Wally (Arthur Mullard). Wally is a professional wrestler, as ‘Wally The Gorilla.’
They kidnap Leonie and drive her off to a lake in the mountains where they set up camp. Leonie still holds a torch for Morgan in spite of everything.
Leonie on the lake – Vanessa Redgrave
The scenes by the lake see Morgan in a Tarzan-Jane fantasy (with clips from the films) interrupted by a crocodile. Leonie has set out on a raft and Morgan is swimming out. I wondered if this was the Lake District and they were also referencing Swallows and Amazons.
Napier arrives in his rather ancient Rolls Royce to rescue her, and Morgan is arrested.
Morgan in burning gorilla suit flees the wedding reception
We cut to the trial, where he is fantasizing about giraffes. He goes to prison. When he comes out he gets a gorilla suit and decides to crash the wedding reception for Leonie and Napier- we intercut with images from King Kong. The gorilla suit catches fire and he escapes on a motorcycle, ending up in a scrapyard in Battersea.
Lobby card: the Battersea sequence. Leonie and others on horses in 1918 Russian uniforms
Imagination takes over and the policeman reappears and helps him into a straitjacket and he’s hoisted up on a crane, with images of Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky around him. The fantasy has turned into a schizoid nightmare as everyone, dressed in Russian Revolution costumes, machine guns him.
Leonie and Morgan at the asylum
He’s committed to an asylum. We see him gardening as Leonie arrivesto visit. She’s pregnant and whispers that it’s Morgan’s child The camera moves back and up, and we see the flower bed he has created … a hammer and sickle.
The final shot …
OVERALL
Vanessa Redgrave was nominated for an Academy Award and was chosen as Best Actress at Cannes 1966.
Archetypal sixties marital fantasy, an extension of Look Back in Anger in the mood of swinging London. As tiresome as it is funny – but it is funny.
Helliwell’s Film Guide
Poor Morgan: victim of a satire that doesn’t bite, lost in a technical confusion of means and ends, emerging like an identikit photograph, all bits and pieces and no recognizable face.
Penelope Houston
The first underground movie made above ground.
John Simon
Vanessa Redgrave with machine gun … points the way to If …. ?
A major surprise which I hadn’t noticed before. The scene at Battersea where they machine gun a straitjacket Morgan (in his fantasy), with Leonie prominent with sub machine gun shouted out as just like If …. and this one came first.
DVD
It’s full frame, not doctored to widescreen so it has broad lines either side. It was B&W but also ordinary 4:3 shape,
This is what you get on a widescreen TV.
The sound is poor, ranging to very poor. It’s brittle and echoey and worse the lip synch is out much of the time.
SOUNDTRACK
All these films I’m reviewing seem to resort to John Dankworth for soundtracks. Much as I admire his jazzy sounds, he hadn’t any relation whatsoever to what people were listening to in Swinging London of the era. Nary an inkling. I’m sure it was way harder to get permission to use chart songs, but even so, Dankworth’s soundtracks are just divorced totally from the era.
Mike Vickers (of Manfred Mann) did a 45 single of Morgan- A Suitable Case For Treatment / Gorilla of My Dreams (composed Dankworth-Green).
VANESSA REDGRAVE
DAVID WARNER
Tom Jones (1963)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Bofors Gun (1968)
THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …
A Taste of Honey (1961)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
Gonks Go Beat (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
Girl On A Motorcycle (1968)
The Bofors Gun (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)
Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Performance (1970)
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