O Lucky Man! is a 1973 film directed by Lindsay Anderson, starring Malcolm McDowell.
It begins with a prologue outside of the main continuity, featuring McDowell as a laborer picking coffee beans in South America. After that the film cuts to McDowell as Mick Travis, an ambitious young man who has just gotten a job as a traveling salesman for a coffee company. He heads off to his sales territory in the north of England, and embarks on a series of increasingly strange adventures. An evening at a sleazy nightclub is followed by a visit to what turns out to be a scary top-secret military installation where Mick is arrested on suspicion of being a spy, and tortured. He escapes from that, only to blunder his way into a medical research facility that is performing bizarre experiments in creating human/animal hybrids.
Then he hangs out with a band and has sex with Patricia, their groupie, then goes to work for Patricia's father, evil industrialist Sir James Burgess—and things keep getting stranger.
Malcolm McDowell came up with the original story idea based on his experience as a coffee salesman before he hit it big in movies. Ralph Richardson plays Monty and Sir James. Helen Mirren plays Patricia and the receptionist at a film casting call (all the actors in the main cast play multiple parts).
Tropes:
- Artificial Animal People: Mick goes exploring at the medical research lab and finds a "man" on a bed—actually, he's a horrifying half-man, half-pig creature. Mick screams in terror, jumps through a window, and escapes.
- Binocular Shot: Seen when Mick pulls up to the locked gate of the Army base. Right after the binocular shot as he peers into the base in confusion, he's arrested as a spy.
- Blackface: Arthur Lowe plays Dr. Munda, the dictator of Zingara. He's a white man in full blackface, in this case as part of the You Look Familiar cast playing multiple roles.
- Brownface: Malcolm McDowell made up to look like a South American laborer in the prologue.
- Bulungi: Mick gets mixed up with an evil businessman exploiting the African country of "Zingara". He ships napalm there to use against rebels, and gets sent to prison as a result.
- Capitalism Is Bad: A running theme. The prologue is a stylized depiction of the exploitation of poor agricultural workers. Patricia talks about her father, Sir James, stole the land of 500,000 Bolivians and doomed them to starve to death, then says "He's the most evil man you'll ever meet." Sir James is then shown to make a deal with the President of Zingara which involves the ruthless exploitation of laborers, as well as using horrifying violence including the dropping of napalm to crush the rebel resistance.
- Creator Cameo: Lindsay Anderson plays the director at the casting call that Mick wanders into near the end.
- Dance Party Ending: The film ends with Mick Travis walking into a dance party filled with most of the characters he's met previously.
- Dirty Cop: Mick witnesses a fatal road accident in which a sports car crashed into a grocery truck. The cops tell him to move on, and threaten to arrest him for vehicular manslaughter if he doesn't. Then after Mick leaves, the cops loot the grocery truck.
- Erotic Eating:
- Mrs. Rowe at the coffee company somehow manages to make a coffee taste test erotic, or maybe into Fan Disservice. She has Mick sample some coffee, asks "what does it do for you?", and licks her lip as he describes the flavor. Then she takes a swig of coffee, kisses Mick, and spits the coffee into his mouth as she kisses.
- Mick staggers into a church after his escape from the Army base. He sees a pile of food but the vicar's wife says it's an offering to God. She then proceeds to nurse him.
- Evil Colonialist: The prologue, in which evil white people chop off a laborer's hands after he steals a few coffee beans. Then there's Mick's coffee company, symbolically named Imperial Coffee.
- Fat, Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit: Apparently it's a South American Evil Colonialist instead of a man from Dixie, but otherwise, the unhealthy-looking fat man in the prologue who sentences the day laborer to get his hands severed fits this trope.
- Greek Chorus: Alan Price acts as a Greek chorus, with his songs commenting on the action. Price sings "Sell, sell, sell, everything you stand for," before the film cuts to Mick embarking on his new career as a Traveling Salesman.
- It May Help You on Your Quest: Monty, another guest at Mrs. Ball's boarding house, gives Mick a gold lame suit for no particular reason, saying that it's "surprisingly warm." Mick winds up wearing that suit for most of the second act after his clothes are ruined in the explosion at the army base.
- Mad Scientist: Professor Millar, the demented scientist running the research lab, who hopes to engineer people that live to be 300 while controlling all breeding through the use of computers. He's also conducting forced sterilizations and creating freakish pig-men.
- Mythology Gag: Start with calling the protagonist "Mick Travis" despite the continuity clearly not matching the continity in ....if. Many actors from this film played similar parts in ....if: Mary Macleod, who plays Mrs. Ball the landlady that seduces Mick, appeared in the prior film as the headmistress's wife who liked to walk naked through dorms. At the end of this movie Mick auditions for a film part that requires him to hold schoolbooks and a machine gun, another obvious allusion to ....if.
- Once Upon a Time: The prologue with McDowell as a South American coffee picker is introduced with a title card saying "Once upon a time." After that's done a title card says "Now" and introduces the main story.
- Oop North: Alluded to by the vicar's wife, after Mick flees from the exploding Army base and meets her in a church. She says "Go south," then explains that "There's nothing in the north for a boy like you." (Ironically, Malcolm McDowell grew up in Yorkshire and Liverpool.)
- Percussive Pickpocket: How two thugs rob Mick, even as he stands at a Salvation Army rally and talks about the essential goodness of man.
- Picaresque: A deeply cynical film about how humans are craven and selfish, with a protagonist who's buffeted by events, wandering through a Random Events Plot in which he has a series of bizarre adventures. Anderson said that Candide, the Trope Maker, was an influence on the screenplay.
- Pop-Star Composer: Alan Price of The Animals did the soundtrack. He and his band appear throughout the film as a Greek Chorus, except for a while when they directly enter the plot. Lindsay Anderson originally wanted to make a documentary about them touring England, but the cost of licensing songs they performed was too high, so he put them in his film instead.
- Random Events Plot: Mick's adventures after he hits the road as a traveling salesman. A night in a strip club, a visit to a secret Army base, a stop at a scary Mad Scientist clinic, a job with an evil businessman, and more. Most of the events could be scrambled around and it wouldn't make much of a difference.
- Retraux: The prologue story with "Mick" the coffee picker is presented as a silent film, with grainy black-and-white and a square Aspect Ratio.
- Riches to Rags: Mick is caught by surprise to find Patricia, five years ago living in the lap of luxury as Sir James's daughter, now a homeless person in the East End of London. When he asks why she didn't marry the Duke of Belminster like she was supposed to, she points to the dirty bum nestled up to her and says "This is the Duke of Belminster." (How they came to this is not explained.)
- Smash to Black: This effect, usually used as a dramatic ending, is used over and over again in this film, for transitions between scenes and even cuts within scenes. The effect is to unsettle the viewer.
- Soft Glass: Mick escapes the research lab by jumping through a glass window, on the second floor no less, and is uninjured when he hits the ground.
- Tally Marks on the Prison Wall: Mick spends the whole five years of his prison sentence doing this, leaving a whole wall covered with tally marks.
- Thematic Series: Malcolm McDowell played characters named Mick Travis in ....if, this film, and the later Britannia Hospital, all of which were directed by Lindsay Anderson. All three dealt with themes of alienation, stagnation, corrupt authority figures, and defiance of authority in a declining post-colonial Britain, but they do not share continuity.
- Traveling Salesman: Mick gets a job as a traveling salesman with a coffee company, although that is really just to set him out on his adventures. He's done selling coffee after his escape from the secret government base.
- The Unsmile: Mrs. Rowe at the coffee company is instructing the new hires to be cheerful. She tells Mr. McIntyre to "Relax those cheeks! Smile!" She then touches his face and manually pulls his lips back into a horrifying grimace. (Mick, who smiles easily, gets the job.)
