This film produced that "I guess you had to be there" feeling more acutely, and painfully, than for any 60's movie I have ever watched. It is almost impossible to believe that (as the vintage trailer claims) Time Magazine called this "Hilarious and poignant," the New York Times "Howlingly funny," and the New Yorker "Brilliant." I don't mind watching dated comic techniques (such as speeding up the film and music for a few seconds) so long as I can push my mind's eye back the appropriate number of decades and *imagine* how I might have reacted in 1966, or '46, or '26. I can smile at the places where an audience howled themselves to tears in an Abbot and Costello comedy. But the lame attempts at wit and slapstick in "Morgan" just left me slack-jawed in disbelief. Was it ever actually funny to watch a man act like a mere retardate, grinning ecstatically as he operates an electric can opener, imitating a gorilla in a subway station, and breaking things? At no point does any of this come across as eccentric or childlike behavior. It is simply annoying, and doubly annoying when Morgan's ex-wife responds, yet again, as though she were witnessing his infantilism for the first time.
But perhaps I am missing a "point" which was obvious forty years ago. You could also say that David Warner is doing a pretty good job of portraying the self-conscious and highly calculated intrusions of an offensive creep. He is less beefy than the Robert Mitchum character in "Cape Fear," but is precisely the same personality type. You expect everyone around him to recoil in disgust. Instead, the most we get is a huffy, "Oh, you are simply insufferable!" reaction. And then his spectacularly beautiful and wealthy ex-wife suddenly makes goo-goo eyes, for absolutely no apparent reason, and goes to bed with him. "Aha!" I would have said in 1966. This criminal mind is merely masquerading as a dolt with delusions of becoming a Karl Marx-worshipping gorilla, a peaceful animal that merely blusters violence. Aha again! He is actually a Marxist "guerilla," a dirty fighter in a class war...
Now I am thinking too hard. I am filling in the gaps where I am not laughing. I have no way of gauging the authors' larger intentions because their smaller dramatic and comic beats are indecipherable. In the middle of this Satire no one around Morgan does anything as realistically simple as changing the locks on the house doors.
Morgan's antics are supposed to be wacky and impish but ultimately aimless and poignant. Yes, there is some sort of structure of comic/tragic insanity which is barely visible here. Unfortunately, that is all that is visible.
I am so impressed by the un-funniness of this film that I would watch the whole thing again if it were shown split-screen alongside another movie showing a theater-full of people watching it in 1966. What, exactly, did they laugh at? At which gems of dialogue did they stroke their chins and nod their head to say, "Fascinating point," and "Very witty, indeed"? This screenplay was first produced for television. England's film community found the material so compelling, so necessary, so... funny that they demanded it be remade for the big screen. It won BAFTA's and launched careers. Why? I guess you had to be there.
But perhaps I am missing a "point" which was obvious forty years ago. You could also say that David Warner is doing a pretty good job of portraying the self-conscious and highly calculated intrusions of an offensive creep. He is less beefy than the Robert Mitchum character in "Cape Fear," but is precisely the same personality type. You expect everyone around him to recoil in disgust. Instead, the most we get is a huffy, "Oh, you are simply insufferable!" reaction. And then his spectacularly beautiful and wealthy ex-wife suddenly makes goo-goo eyes, for absolutely no apparent reason, and goes to bed with him. "Aha!" I would have said in 1966. This criminal mind is merely masquerading as a dolt with delusions of becoming a Karl Marx-worshipping gorilla, a peaceful animal that merely blusters violence. Aha again! He is actually a Marxist "guerilla," a dirty fighter in a class war...
Now I am thinking too hard. I am filling in the gaps where I am not laughing. I have no way of gauging the authors' larger intentions because their smaller dramatic and comic beats are indecipherable. In the middle of this Satire no one around Morgan does anything as realistically simple as changing the locks on the house doors.
Morgan's antics are supposed to be wacky and impish but ultimately aimless and poignant. Yes, there is some sort of structure of comic/tragic insanity which is barely visible here. Unfortunately, that is all that is visible.
I am so impressed by the un-funniness of this film that I would watch the whole thing again if it were shown split-screen alongside another movie showing a theater-full of people watching it in 1966. What, exactly, did they laugh at? At which gems of dialogue did they stroke their chins and nod their head to say, "Fascinating point," and "Very witty, indeed"? This screenplay was first produced for television. England's film community found the material so compelling, so necessary, so... funny that they demanded it be remade for the big screen. It won BAFTA's and launched careers. Why? I guess you had to be there.