manuel-pestalozzi In many ways this film is remarkable. The story is a classic love/convenience triangle. And helplessly jealous Morgan is cut out to be the big loser from the start. A working class hopeful and a painter, he is just not willing to become an adult and prefers to descend into lunacy instead. His attempts to win back his upper class ex wife, an insecure character herself, are childish and quixotic in nature and enlighten the basically sad story with slapstick moments. The acting is mostly very good. David Warner is sweet and unforgettable – why he was chosen to play so many villains later in his career remains a mystery to me. Vanessa Redgrave's Oscar nomination was well deserved. Irene Handl as Morgan's mother is also very good. She represents the family background with its Marxist tradition. Apparently her generation hoped that lads like Morgan would become the enlightened new leaders of their movement! Instead, her son is a good for nothing character, for him the emblems of communism are just a decor to shock the petty bourgeois. At the time this movie was made, it became chic again to be orientated toward the left. In China Mao started the Cultural Revolution, being a Red meant (in the West, at least) being unconventional, hip and somehow liberated. This romantic, pubertal New Left lasted more ore less until the genocide in Cambodia, then their supporters integrated themselves into the existing system or indulged in esoteric activities (or both). To me Morgan somehow represents the New Left which then emerged.

screaminmimi I loved this movie when it came out. Haven't seen it since, so I'm operating from memory, but one of the strongest impressions I got from it (and even wrote a letter to "Esquire" disputing that magazine's review) was that Morgan was not psychotic. Eccentric, sure, but crazy like a fox, a sort of McMurphy for swinging England. My impression then was that everything around him and Leonie was out of whack, and that Leonie was more inclined to submit to the dominant cultural mishigas because the life of an eccentric's wife was too hard to take, as much as she loved him.I felt that the story challenged conventional notions of what is normal, and the "normal" that Morgan was an outsider to was insufferably stifling to the human spirit. My fellow IMDb commentator who recoiled from the "weird politics" of this movie, missed the point. Morgan wasn't a Communist. He was the son of Communists. He was a lot freer than any ideologue. The sight gag at the end of the picture is not about him being a Commie. It's about him being an outsider and a prankster to the core.I don't think the movie makes light of real mental illness. I think it skewers overly enthusiastic diagnoses of psychosis when someone's behavior is socially inconvenient. I don't know that I'd find an assessment of Morgan Delt as a harmless flake to be any more appropriate, in that it's still an incredibly patronizing view of the guy, but at least it wouldn't land him in the rubber room. Although, I found that last scene so encouraging in showing his ability to transcend institutionalization on his own terms.Thinking in terms of what would happen next if the movie were to continue, my biggest fear at the time was that institutionalization would eventually break his spirit. He reminded me of so many of my peers who were dumped in psych hospitals because their parents didn't know what to do with them. It was easier to call them sick than to deal with the real people they were. In that sense, this is a very '60's movie, because it seemed that the psych hospitalization rate was spiking among young people of that time.Yeah, you had to be there. And, indeed, how can you go wrong with a movie that has a Johnny Dankworth score?

ccthemovieman-1 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.

David Elroy Bravo David Warner for his exuberant and unrestrained performance. He is desperate, driven, selfish, sensitive all at once. His affinity with animals symbolizes his continual acting on instinct. Bravo too to Vanessa Redgrave who believably shows that whackiness can co-exist with poshness.Sadly, the movie makes Morgan an earnest communist, and this has the effect of dating the film terribly. I strove hard to see the communism not as literal but as symbolic of Morgan's "rebel" nature, but doing this was an uphill climb. Within just a few years after this film was made, it became clear that communism could never mix with the gleeful artistic spirit that Morgan embodies, that in real life communism was soul-deadening and drab.But a movie need not be wholly believable or wholly good. Warner's performance alone makes this film a ride worth taking.