O Lucky Man!

Mick Travis, starting out as a coffee salesman, travels the length of England. Along the way he wanders into a secret military installation, signs onto the subject list of a medical experiment, works for a millionaire businessman, goes to prison and finally attends a film audition. In each episode the same actors meet him in different roles. The film is not interested in story. It is interested in every layer of the system working the same way: wherever Mick goes he is used, and each time he takes it for an opportunity. For three hours the film repeats the same lesson in different costumes. The form is episodic and brittle: between the sections Alan Price and his band appear onscreen and sing, so the music is on the stage rather than behind it. The choice turns the film into the telling of a fable. Lindsay Anderson directed; Malcolm McDowell both leads and supplied the source, since the idea came out of his own years selling coffee. The film is the middle of Anderson's Mick Travis trilogy, which began with If. Ralph Richardson and Rachel Roberts appear in more than one role each. Who it is for: viewers who like allegory and British cinema of the seventies. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot take length and repetition. It runs past three hours, some episodes are identical to each other and the ending deliberately fails to satisfy.