Malcolm McDowell: Insolent Angel

From May 22 to May 30, 2002

photo: if....

about the series | film descriptions and times

The Walter Reade Theater salutes an exceptional British actor, whose acting career has spanned four decades: Malcolm McDowell. Vastly talented, with a seductive voice, mercurial personality and bold physicality, McDowell commands the screen as hero or villain. So full of ferocious energy that he often seems on the verge of bursting into song and dance like a Yorkshire Jimmy Cagney, he can be equally dynamic when he subsides into reflection, even serenity. In TIME AFTER TIME he plays an unlikely romantic lead as H.G. Wells who is wooed by an American bank employee (charming Mary Steenburgen) through the medium of a time machine. In the powerful and previously unseen Soviet-made ASSASSIN OF THE TSAR, which Vincent Canby of The New York Times called "a remarkable... meditation on regicide" he embodies a dual role brilliantly and looks entirely like a Russian out of a Dostoevsky novel. In GET CRAZY he plays an egregiously narcissistic rocker named Reggie Wanker in a performance that demonstrates his gift for broad comic effect. Going into Lindsay Anderson's IF... McDowell was a 24-year-old unknown playing a 16-year-old rebel. He makes his entrance memorably in a black cape that covers most of his face, a canny self-dramatizer. The character of Mick Travis — brash, insolent, but innocent — recurred in Anderson's second film, O LUCKY MAN. Here, Mick embarks on a series of comic and horrific misadventures that form the core of a picaresque journey punctuated by an inspired musical score by Alan Price. In between, the Malcolm-persona is crystallized in Stanley Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. As the Beethoven-worshipping droog Alex, he is mesmerizing, his enormous blue eyes staring insolently at us from beneath heavy lashes. No less riveting today in the soon to be released GANGSTER NO. 1, he brings out the bitterness and braggadocio of a former London crime lord engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with his past. To get the full measure of McDowell's appeal, don't miss Harold Pinter's mordant domestic masterpiece, THE COLLECTION, starring Laurence Olivier, Alan Bates, Helen Mirren and McDowell. This 60-minute Granada TV production, directed by Michael Apted, will be preceded by a 20-minute video of McDowell career clips featuring films not shown in this series. Malcolm McDowell will appear in person at a number of public screenings. – Joanna Ney

Thanks to Mike Kaplan of Lagoon Pictures for the film excerpts and to Michael Apted and Granada Films for THE COLLECTION.

Malcolm McDowell: Insolent Angel was organized by Joanna Ney.

FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE
Joseph Losey, UK, 1970, 110m
A rarely seen film from the great Joseph Losey. McDowell and Robert Shaw (who wrote the adaptation of Barry England's novel) are Ansell and MacConnachie, two men on the run across an unidentified desert landscape, being chased by a black helicopter. Every time they slow down to take a rest, they tell each other little stories about their lives and their loved ones. But that relentless helicopter just keeps on coming. This small-scale allegory is beautifully shot by the great Henri Alekan (Beauty and the Beast, Wings of Desire), with Cronenberg regular Peter Suschitzky as his assistant.
Wed May 22: 2; Mon May 27: 3:30

TIME AFTER TIME
Nicolas Meyer, U.S., 1979, 112m
Nicolas Meyer, the author of The Seven Percent Solution, made his directorial debut with this sweet, funny 1979 film. McDowell gives one of his most charming performances as H.G. Wells, who ventures into the future in the time machine of his own imagination in pursuit of the man he realizes is Jack the Ripper (a perfectly cast David Warner). McDowell makes Wells into a shy, courtly man, and his incredulous, bemused reactions to life in 1970s San Francisco are worth the price of admission on their own. But TIME AFTER TIME has another dimension that puts it in the company of films like To Have and Have Not and Woman of the Year: you can actually feel McDowell and his leading lady, the radiant Mary Steenburgen, falling in love as the film progresses. They were married soon after.
Wed May 22: 4; Mon May 27: 5:30

IF...
Lindsay Anderson, U.K., 1968, 111m
Brand new 35m print from England
McDowell made his first impact in this incendiary film about armed revolt in a British boarding school, which bears interesting resemblances to Vigo's Zéro de conduite. Between IF.... and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, McDowell all but cornered the market on the iconography of British teenage rebellion, anticipating the punk era by half a decade. Director Lindsay Anderson at one point offered the script of IF... to Nicholas Ray, who thought that it should be handled by an English director. What a wise decision! Anderson's Cheltenham College background with its emphasis on killer competition and one-upsmanship, his attitude toward the British establishment, his scathing wit, mitigated by honest sentiment, make the film both uniquely English and universal. By the way, the shifts from color to black and white are significant of nothing more than budgetary limits. The film had a great tag line: "Which side are you on?"
Wed May 22: 6:30 (followed by Q & A); Mon May 27: 1; Thurs May 30: 3:30

THE COLLECTION
(Granada Media)
Michael Apted, U.K., 1976, video, 60m
This Granada Television adaptation of Harold Pinter's 1960 play received glowing reviews in England and when it aired on PBS in 1978. Frank Rich in Time magazine described it as "one of Pinter's best pays — a small masterpiece. Skillfully constructed and mordantly funny, it is as scathing as a Waugh novel, as suspenseful as a Hitchcock film. Michael Apted has obtained a riveting ensemble performance from a dream cast." Indeed, Laurence Olivier, Alan Bates, Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren are ideal interpreters of Pinter's precise, spare dialogue with its intimations of menace and violence just beneath the surface. The situation is, as always, curious. A London boutique owner drops in on a dress designer at 4am. A husband suspects his wife may be having an affair in a hotel room in Leeds. Two men go at each other with cheese knives. Not much happens yet several lives are damaged forever. Bates is the paranoid husband, Helen Mirren, the sensuous wife, McDowell the suspected seducer and Olivier (who also produced) his protector.
preceded by
McDowell film excerpts from Sunset, Cross Creek, Tank Girl, Hugo Pool, et al.(20m, video)
Wed May 22: 9 (intro and Q & A) ; Sat May 25: 1:30 (intro and Q & A)

GANGSTER NO. 1
(IFC Films)
Paul McGuigan, U.K., 2000, 105m
With GANGSTER NO. 1, Paul McGuigan, director of The Acid House, provides a window onto the world of 60s high-rise flats, Italian leather shoes and gangster sadism, all accompanied by veteran film composer John Dankworth's jazz score. Malcolm McDowell stars as the simply named Gangster 55, an aging crime boss who, upon learning of his nemesis' release from jail, recounts, via flashback, his ruthless ascent through the ranks of the 60s London underworld. Displaying a knack for colorful and inventive violence, Gangster 55 initially attracts the attention of the illustrious Butcher of Mayfair, Frankie Mays (David Thewlis), who unwisely takes him under his wing. Newcomer Paul Bettany gives a terrific performance as McDowell's icy younger self and Malcolm McDowell effortlessly reveals the dark recesses of unbridled ambition as a dead end. Director McGuigan provides a particularly harsh and intriguing take on the highs and lows of life as a career criminal. GANGSTER NO. 1 is an IFC Films release opening in June.
Thurs May 23: 8 (intro and Q & A); Tue May 28: 1

RAGING MOON aka LONG AGO TOMORROW
Bryan Forbes, U.K., 1970, 110m
Rarely shown film in excellent 35 print
Far more than simply an "overcoming a disability" story, RAGING MOON is an understated yet passionate portrait of young people in dire circumstances. Bruce (McDowell) is a working-class, brash, womanizing bloke who is felled by a football injury that leaves him a paraplegic. In the hospital he meets Jill (Nanette Newman), a classy doctor's daughter who has been wheelchair bound for years. Being a paraplegic does not alter Bruce’s personality, it only makes him more acerbic and belligerent, which Jill finds attractive, although she is still bound to Geoffrey, her dutiful fiance. A situation that might have easily degenerated into Love Story with wheelchairs is handled with consummate restraint, credibility and humor, as Bruce and Jill become loving friends, even as they face a grim future. McDowell and Newman evidently did a lot of advance preparation for their roles, with spectacular results. Given the awful seriousness of the subject matter, its treatment is handled with surprising grace.
Fri May 24: 1:30 & 9 (intro at 9pm show)

CAT PEOPLE
Paul Schrader, U.S., 1982, 118m
Paul Schrader’s delirious, sexually unhinged remake of Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People is set in New Orleans, America’s greatest Sin City, and set against Nando Scarfiotti’s colorful and hypnotic production design. Nastassja Kinski at her most carnal gets the Simone Simon role — you don't have any trouble believing this woman mutates into a panther when she’s sexually aroused. And McDowell, in the role of her incestuous brother, matches her pound for pound in feral intensity. The two of them are so intensely animalistic that poor John Heard, inheriting the Kent Smith role, is virtually a forgotten man. With a pulsing score by Giorgio Moroder and a hit song by David Bowie.
Fri May 24: 3:45; Sun May 26: 9:15

ASSASSIN OF THE TSAR
(U.S. Premiere)
Karen Chakhnazarov, UK/Russia, 1991, 104m
The first British-Russian co-production was the official Russian entry at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, where it received considerable acclaim. Impossible to have been made in the pre-Gorbachev era, it was a critical and popular success throughout Russia. The meticulously reconstructed, historical details in the film are based on previously unreleased information contained in the diaries of Nicholas II, the Tsarina, and Yurovsky, their assassin. In the film a schizophrenic inmate known as Timofeyev (McDowell) confesses to the hospital doctor (Oleg Yankovsky) that in a former life, he led the murder of the Tsar and his family. Writing in The New York Times, Vincent Canby described the film as "magnificent looking and acted with immense skill by Malcolm McDowell and Yankovsky (from Tarkovsky's Nostalghia)." Shot on authentic locations, "... ASSASSIN is a profound, psychological meditation on regicide."
Fri May 24: 6:30 (intro and Q & A); Sun May 26: 1

O LUCKY MAN
(Excellent 35mm print)
Lindsay Anderson, U.K., 1973, 178m
An epic road movie that is a kind of Candide with a dollop of Three Penny Opera. The basic idea came from Malcolm McDowell and was based on his experiences as a coffee salesman in the north of England. The story, punctuated by title cards and ironic melodic "commentary" by the inimitable Alan Price (formerly of The Animals), was a collaboration between Lindsay Anderson and writer David Sherwin. Many of the actors play dual or triple roles in a journey that picks up Mick Travis (McDowell) ten years after If..., now an ambitious young man on the make. En route to success, his fortunes rise and fall and rise again, as he runs into a bizarre cast of characters and situations before finding partial accommodation through a new Zen-like awareness. Incredibly daring for its time, as well as stylistically bold, the film has a star roster of British greats to be envied that includes Rachel Roberts, Helen Mirren, Ralph Richardson and Mona Washbourne. Sat May 25: 4 (intro and Q & A); Wed May 29: 7

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
(New 35mm print)
Stanley Kubrick, UK, 1971, 137m
Malcolm McDowell had already made an impact on youth culture with his starring role in IF..., but he changed it forever with A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. With a little help, of course, from his director, Stanley Kubrick, and from Anthony Burgess' source novel. What more can be said about the movie that practically invented an entire sensibility, the movie that left Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa and Luis Buñuel awestruck and audiences flocking to theaters for repeat viewings? Here's Kubrick: "Malcolm McDowell...was, without the slightest doubt, the best actor for the part." He wasn't wrong, because the film is virtually unthinkable without him and he will be forever linked with its success. Still vivid and potent after all these years, this is the first time it is shown at the Walter Reade Theater.
Sat May 25: 8 (intro and Q & A); Sun May 26: 3:30 (followed by Q & A); Wed May 29: 4; Thurs May 30: 9

GET CRAZY
Allan Arkush, U.S., 1983, 92m
Beautiful 35mm archival print
GET CRAZY draws an affectionate and funny portrait of a Fillmore-like mecca during a New Year's Eve concert. Director Arkush worked at the Fillmore and is savvy about his territory and his cast of characters. They include a likeable band of hippies, a Bill Graham-like theater manager and various "acts" who come to perform, including Malcolm McDowell as "Reggie Wanker," a cockney egomaniac superstar and high liver with a Mick Jagger swagger (note: Malcolm does his own singing), and Lou Reed, who seems to be sending up Bob Dylan at his bardic best. Wonderful gags and music personalities abound. There is Fabian Forte; a punk rocker (Lee Ving of Fear) so vicious that he has to be chained to a staircase when left alone; the blues singer Bill Henderson performs with a backgroup of Orthodox Jews that has been booked by mistake; and a girl band called Nada, led by Lori Eastside (also the choreographer of the film) adds more levity to the proceedings. The 35mm print is pristine thanks to North Carolina School of the Arts Archive.
Sun May 26: 7 (intro and Q & A); Wed May 29: 2

CALIGULA
(courtesy of General Media Entertainment, Inc.)
Bob Guccione and Tinto Brass, U.S., 1979, 156m
Bob Guccione's version of the life of the mad emperor is one of the more notorious artifacts of the 70s. With help from Gore Vidal and — unbelievably — an uncredited "treatment" from Roberto Rossellini, Guccione and his director Tinto Brass fashioned a pageant of excess that was perfectly in keeping with the times. But somewhere amidst all the visual clutter (Guccione himself did some "additional photography," no doubt on the sexual detail added after the stars were long gone) there's a serious portrait of decadence and the abuses of power that come with it, and it's McDowell, as Caligula himself, who carries the film with his crafty, willful ways, as well as a satyr's sexuality. Leaping like Nijinski, flinging verbal abuse or seductive glances, he is a one-man Roman carnival. With the ever-beautiful Helen Mirren as Caesonia, Peter O' Toole having a loungefest as Tiberius, and John Gielgud gracefully collecting a paycheck as Nerva.
Mon May 27: 8

BRITTANIA HOSPITAL
(Excellent 35mm print)
Lindsay Anderson, U.K., 1982; 115m
A savage and subversive comedy about England, depicted as a hospital in shambles, BRITTANIA was meant (according to Anderson's diary) as "a cautionary word to the human species." With a brilliant cast comprised of Anderson's informal repertory company of actor-friends, it featured Leonard Rossiter as a venal union official, Graham Crowden as a mad scientist, and Malcolm McDowell as the inquiring photojournalist who falls into his clutches. Other members of the cast in this Brechtian extravaganza include Alan Bates, Joan Plowright and Jill Bennett. As hospital staff and labor officials await the visit of "HRS" (the Queen Mother) to inaugurate the celebration of a new wing, a strike is threatened and protestors storm the gates. The release of the film coincided with Margaret Thatcher ordering an army to the Falkland Islands as a diversion from labor troubles, massive unemployment, and riots in the North. Naturally, the film was condemned for hitting the bull's-eye. Its stylized camera work and editing reflect the director's overall design, immeasurably aided by the contribution of his favorite cameraman, Mike Fash. Andrzej Wajda admired BRITTANIA as "the best Polish film I've seen in a long time."
Tues May 28: 9; Thurs May 30: 1

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