I went into this not expecting much given that a lot of Sellers' output is somewhat dire. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this relativity unknown movie. Sellers plays an older man who is attempting to romance a younger woman by coercion. At the start of the movie we are not sure of the setup, Sellers ramps up the creep tension in the opening scenes, this is a long way from his usual slapstick but effectively done. I'm not sure Sellers is a good actor in the traditional sense, his expressions and speech are somewhat over-mannered, but it's effective in this setting. The target of Sellers' affection spends the first 30 minutes of the movie screwing up her face like a naughty 5 year old, but she is redeemed by her almost unbearable cuteness. Anyway, without giving too much away, she is forced into a choice. What transpires is quite interesting, in the context of the movie the decision she makes is assumed to be the correct one given the context, a happy ending as such. However, to the modern viewer the situation seems more morally ambiguous and the rationale implied somewhat self serving and narrow, who is exploiting who? An interesting movie for both Sellers' performance and as a time capsule of 60s morality.
Reviews
2 Reviews
Savage Messiah
(1972)
I Just Wanted It To Stop.
3 August 2013
I'm a huge Ken Russell fan, but this one is just a disaster, the movie is filled with Russell's trademark sumptuous visuals, but the main character spends the entire movie shrieking artistic clichés. The magic of Ken Russell is that he transports you to his own romantic view of the world, where the artist struggles to transcend the banalities of everyday life. But in this case it just falls flat, maybe if Oliver Reed had been cast as the main character, he would have lent the movie some of his characteristic intensity, but as it stands, the main character is woefully miscast. Not a patch on Song of Summer or Women in Love.
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