Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966)

MORGAN : A SUITABLE CASE FOR TREATMENT

(1966)

David Warner / Vanessa Redgrave / Robert Stephens / Irene Handl / Bernard Bresslaw / Arthur Mullard / Newton Blick / Nan Munro / Peter Collingwood / Graham Crowden / John Garrie / John Rae / Music John Dankworth / Art Direction Phillip Harrison / Costume Jocelyn Rickards / Editing Tom Priestley & Victor Proctor / Cinematography Larry Pozer / Producer Leon Clore / Director Karel Reisz

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Despite a rousing reception upon it’s release in the mid sixties, a nomination at the Oscars, a Bafta win, Best Film at the Locarno International Film Festival that year and a Best Actress win for Vanessa Redgrave at Cannes, ‘Morgan’ has found himself somewhat sidelined these days. Written off as a confusing experiment by modern film critics, drifting into a sort of footnote limbo, usually reserved for disposable toot that missed the mark. Morgan dropped out of view while no one was looking, and lost it’s place among the key movers and shakers of the British New Wave. ‘The Knack’, ‘Blow-up!’ and ‘Billy Liar’, all share similar visual styles and surreal approaches, but all have stood the test of time unscathed by the decades since their release. I’ve a sneeking suspicion that Vanessa Redgrave may be one of the causes. Though a stunning woman back in her 60’s incarnation, and exuding much sexual alure in Antonini’s Blow-up!’, she is a far softer, less complex character in Morgan, more sweet than sexy, and ‘Blow-up!’ had a veritable parade of pulchritude before David Hemmings lens.. as with the Iconic opening of ‘The Knack’, with it’s near infinite flood of cloned feminine perfection. The loose nature of these films are held in place by a solid linchpin, like the beautiful girl in a farce. Now of course I’m not saying that Miss.Redgrave isn’t a beauty, far from it, but her elegant, willowy appeal doesn’t seem to arrest those used to such femme fatales from the period as say.. a Monica Vitti, or a Bardot.

Billy Liar’, had alot in common with ‘Morgan’ really, but Billy was a far less complex character than Morgan, Tom Courtenay’s Walter Mitty persona fails endear or engender much pity, and the kitchen sink elements seem a little clumsy in comparison to the likes of ‘The Family Way’ and ‘A Kind of Loving’. Both films were billed (somewhat loosly) as comedies, but ‘Billy’ succeeds only in making us uncomfortable in his lies.. a sort of Ricky Gervais without the funny bits. Whereas Morgan has a black humour with a perspective that reflects the new satirical comedy of Peter Cook & co. What does ‘Billy Liar’ have? It has Julie Christie. For fifteen minutes only of course, but that doesn’t really matter, her presence elevates the film considerably. Tom Courtenay was a fine actor, but David Warner (in his only substantial non-villain role) is far more interesting, and so are his fantasies. Lies catch up with Billy Liar, forcing him to deal with the consequences, accept the illusion of his dreams, and consign them to a lesser role. Morgan is in far more danger, his madness is the free will of the new generation in friction against the establishment. Morgan is fighting for the future of youth, for his very soul. A soul hidden beneath the hairy skin of an ape costume. As The Revenger’s Tragedy so elequantly puts it – ‘Surely we’re all mad people, and they whom we think are, are not; we mistake those, tis we are mad in sense, they but in clothes.’

A central motif of the ‘Morgan’ experience is that of the intercut wildlife footage, in a sort of reverse anthropomorphic comparison between the civilised world, and that of the animal kingdom. A beautiful, graceful girl seen gliding down an underground escalator becomes a majestic Peacock. Freedom is the ape, swinging among the topmost branches.. The legal system, with it’s predatorial Solicitors and bewigged, antiquated Judge are transformed into a pack of hunting lions dragging down the majesty of a regal Giraffe. ‘Have you nothing to say’ asks the stuffy Judge.. ‘I don’t recognize this Court’, replies a bemused Morgan in the dock. One other small stylistic flourish is the occasional freeze frame not uncommon in the 60’s visual lexicon, but a devise that seems to cause irritation among modern reviewers of the film. ‘Blow-up!’ clearly utilises the freeze frame to greater effect, and with greater resonance, being a film principally concerned with photography and the capture of static images. And it is quite true also that Morgan’s visual appeal isn’t in the same league as those jewels in the New wave crown by Godard, Malle, Vadim, Polanski etc. etc.. but it certainly is far from dull, and really does deserve at least a nod of appreciation for it’s bold visuals, and quirky innovations.

Morgan’s obsessions are derived and expressed principally through film, a most modern preoccupation hitherto the domain of the filmmaker and cine-artiste, now a universal means of expression and common cultural knowledge with the advent of the videotape, DVD and Digital Age. In this, ‘Morgan’ is decidedly ahead of it’s contemporaries, who utilise theatrical asides (as in ‘Billy Liar’) to represent inspirations and abstract connections. The modern audience has a wealth of cinema and TV to plunder and dissect as never before. Favourite scenes, clips and montages are uploaded and shared with an inexhaustable appetite for the moving image.

THE EGG TROTSKI SCENE

– ‘What’s all this?’

– ‘It’s an island of sanity this car. An island in a world of pain. I’m an exile waiting with an ice-pick. You do know about the ice-pick don’t you?’

-‘It’s ‘im that got it..Trotski..right there. Right in the back of ‘is skull. Leon Trotski: co-founder of the Russian Revolution, creator of the red army, great revolutionary thinker..’

‘Then BINGO! Right on the top of ‘is nut. Joe Stalin kicked Trotski out of his Mother Country..seventeen years in exhile he was.. that wasn’t good enough for Joe. No, he wanted Trotski dead.’

‘Now then, that’s Trotski (hands an egg to the policeman) This, is the ice-pick (brandishes a razor) A burning ‘ot day in Mexico, Stalin’s agent has wormed ‘is way into Trotski’s ‘ouse among ‘is wife and friends, and they’re both alone in the great man’s study.’

‘Trotski is sitting behind his desk..’

‘..quietly the killer creeps up behind ‘im and.. (crushes the egg with his razor) ..’

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– ‘You’re a class traitor Morgan, that’s what you are.’

– ‘Them’s fighting words Ma.’

– ‘I mean we brought you up to respect Lenin, Marx, Harry Pollitt. You was a Firebrand when you was sixteen, and you were clever. At Party meetings they always used to say to me, ‘You got an intellectual there Mrs.Delt, ain’t always the middle classes that’ve got all the brains y’know. It’s lads like Morgan that are gonna take over this country one of these days.’ Yees, now look at you. I don’t think you’ll take over anything Morgan.’

The one image that has managed to seep into the public conciousness, is that of Morgan done up in his gorilla costume speeding across London on a motorbike.. perhaps I should mention he’s on fire too. In any other film this would be a scene of farce (the sort of thing Spike Milligan would have done before breakfast each morn), but the donning of the Gorilla suit is far more disturbing than the comical scenario initially suggests. The suit itself is a fairly typical fancy-dress outfit, but the intense close-ups and almost mournful expressions that the cinematographer Larry Pozer manages to extract from the rigid mask are hypnotic. Morgan melds with the suit, and his sanity buckles and warps in a scene of abject horror, where he struggles to remove the mask.. wild eyed and raving.

Morgan’s fractured mindscape transforms those around him into a firing squad of communist freedom fighters, attacking him as a rogue element, dangerous to society, reminicent of No’6’s fight with for and against the individual in McGoohan’s iconic 60’s series ‘The Prisoner’.

As with the best of these stories that deal with inner turmoil and confused realities, nothing is ever truly settled. In the final scene we see a calm, collected Morgan meticulously arranging shrubs in a the garden of a Sanitarium. He is visited by a now pregnant Vanessa Redgrave, who telling him the child is his, tosses her head back and laughs in a slightly manic manner, in stark contrast to the now conformist Morgan. An ambiguity hangs in the air.. an uncomfortable judder that, were we standing, might necessitate a step backward. An element of comfort arrives in the final shot though, as the camera pulls back and reveals what Morgan has been so engrossed in.. a flower bed, in the shape of a hammer and sickle. Viva la revolution.

‘Then raise the scarlet standard high.
Within its shade we’ll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We’ll keep the red flag flying here.’

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STILLS

Poppy Shakespeare (2008)

POPPY SHAKESPEARE

 Anna Maxwell Martin / Naiomie Harris / Jonathan Cullan / Adrian Scarborough / Claire Benedict / Cathy Murphy / Nicholas Beveney / Marie Critchley /  Darrell D’Silva / Janine Birkett / Michelle Dockery / Marie Critchley / Josef Altin / Based on the novel  ‘Poppy Shakespeare’  Clare Allan / Screenplay  Sarah Williams / Art Direction  Grant Armstrong / Cinematography  Danny Cohen / Directed  Benjamin Ross

‘Since prisons and madhouses exist, why somebody is bound to sit in them.’ 

ANTON CHEKHOV

Channel 4’s pledge to make modern, bold programming is exemplified in it’s adaptation of Clare Allan’s lyrical novel ‘Poppy Shakespeare’. While the BBC single-handedly keeps the period drama alive, Channel 4 feeds vital blood into the modern British film industry, putting some of that Big Brother cash to good use. Anna Maxwell Martin (‘Bleak House’ and star of the West End hit ‘Caberet’) plays ‘N’, the nameless veteran of a lifetime in mental healthcare, outpatient from the Dorothy Fish hospital. One of a number of fellow patients battling with the realisation that cutbacks and privatisation will gradually see each of them one by one cut loose to the despair of their own recogniscence. Despite her sorrowful demeaner (looking remarkably like Kenny from South Park in her highly zipped red jacket) and tragic childhood, it becomes gradually clear that ‘N’ is by far the sanest ‘dribbler’ on the block, Institutionalised yet savvy to how the system works. Enter Poppy Shakespeare, played by Naiomie Harris (you may remember her Jamaican accented harpy from Pirates of the Caribbean), admitted to the Dorothy Fish against her will.. aggressive, but seemingly quite sane. ‘N’ is given the job of showing Poppy the ropes, but the two quickly latch onto eachother in a rather intense relationship that sees a reversal of fortunes, personalities, and perceptions of reality.

Anna Maxwell Martin really is mezmerizing to watch (both here and in the achingly sad ‘Bleak House’), the only actor I can think of to compare her with is Timothy Spall, or perhaps Ralph Fiennes performance in the David Cronenberg film ‘Spider’..except Anna manages to exude far more natural charm. Although Anna dominates each and every scene, Naiome Harris does an admirable job, and there’s a wonderful collection of characters in the supporting cast. Adrian Scarborough (‘Gavin & Stacey’) heads up the ministry of madness in the guise of ‘Middle class Michael’, along with an assortment of notables including Cathy Murphy (‘Casualty 1906’) and a wonderfully sincere Claire Benedict (I seem to remember seeing her in ‘Grange Hill’ as one of the teachers?) amongst others. There’s a lovely little scene in a trapped lift with Nicholas Woodeson (Posca from ‘Rome’) delivering an eerie little speech, blurring the already smudged line between sanity & madness further. Darrell D’Silva’s state legitimized drug dealer dispenses his wares Trainspotting style with a dash of market salesmanship. There’s more than a hint of 60’s modernist nightmare ‘The Prisoner’ ( ‘but with N’ reversing No.6’s fight, in a bid to stay locked in) inmates reduced to the identity of their lettered chairs, and the shifting goalposts of control. ‘Along with Catch-22 twisted logic – ‘I know it sounds insane Poppy, but the reality is that you must be considered mad to be eligable for Mad-money, and you need the Mad-money to pay the legal fees involved in proving yourself sane.’  Edging into the territory of Terry Gilliam’s ‘surrealist nightmare ‘Brazil’.

However good the acting in these pieces, there’s ever the danger that the depressive air surrounding issues of mental health will put most people off, but I really don’t think that’s the case here. There’s enough black comedy and stylish flourishes to the art direction to draw us in, and the charming way in which ‘N’ asides to the camera and looms close to lens holds our fixed attention to the last. On top of this we’re charmed by that catchy ‘Pilote’ music with it’s whistles & claps serving as N’s theme (‘The Turtle bonobo mix’ .. reminding me a little of ‘something from Luc Besson’s The Big Blue’ soundtrack) acting as an effective lure in adverts the week before Poppy aired. One mistake that Channel 4 managed to perpetrate though was in it’s advertising of one of those ‘Man with a tumour for a head’ type of documentaries (the ones that pretend to be sympathetic, but nevertheless come off as a shameless freakshow..usually hidden away on Channel 5) just prior to airing, rather damaging Poppy Shakespeare’s honest attempt to de-stigmatise disability. What’s next I wonder..’The boy who’s head keeps falling off?’

‘I thought you were..a nurse..Look, that thing I just said about not being a nutter, well..I’m sorry, I didn’t realise. I ain’t got a problem with mental illness..it’s just there’s nothing the matter with me.’

‘Just like that..I can’t believe it..she wasn’t normal last night. God knows she was high as the sky last night! How could she be normal all of a sudden?’

‘I wouldn’t worry about that. You must be mad, or else you wouldn’t be here.’

POPPY SHAKESPEARE AUTHOR CLARE ALLAN

Clare Allan used her 10-year stint in the mental health system as inspiration for her acclaimed novel Poppy Shakespeare, which is now a Channel 4 feature film. She speaks to Kate Weinberg about her journey from inpatient to feted writer.

“I think people often feel a bit short-changed when they meet me,” says novelist and former psychiatric patient Clare Allan. “That I’m not doing the shuffling, dribbling thing. Or wielding an axe.”
She recounts the story of her first ever interview with a publisher. “This woman was looking a bit cheated by the rather-too-sane conversation we were having. Then I leant back to emphasise a point and fell off my chair. That seemed to cheer her up enormously.” We’ve just ordered a Salad Nicoise in Cecconi’s, an Italian restaurant in the heart of Mayfair frequented by Saville Row businessmen and the I’m-so-big-in-media-I-wear-jeans-crowd. I tell her that the lack of axe is not a terrible let down and that the waiters are probably quite pleased about the dribbling. But she’s right. At six foot, with short, dark hair and black velvet trousers she is more Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight than Kathy Bates in Misery. Not being mad enough was what Clare remembers worrying about on the bus on the way to her first psychiatric hospital.

“I was terrified they wouldn’t let me in, because I knew how much I needed the help. Like a lot of people I relied on stereotypes. You know, straight-jacket, nervous tic, boiling rabbits….” She dispatches some anchovies onto her side plate and looks up, deadpan. “I did lose a rabbit when I was a kid. But I’m pretty sure he died of old age.” Hearing Clare talk about her experiences is a master class in trenches humour. She recalls one of her first days sitting in the common room of a psychiatric hospital in Archway, where they all chained smoked and drank endless cups of tea. “A patient was talking about the time she drove to Beachy Head to commit suicide. “Only she had to turn back because she couldn’t find anywhere to park the car.”

This marked the beginning of a ten-year stint in the mental health system. Shunted around various psychiatric hospitals in North London, Clare was variously diagnosed with paranoid psychosis, psychotic depression, developing schizophrenia, manic depression, major psychotic disorder and borderline personality – a list which she claims was “about as much use as covering a parcel with ‘fragile’ stickers.” So did they put her on medication? Clare gives me a look like an M & S employee who’s been asked whether they stock underpants. “Anti-psychotics, mood-stabilisers, sleeping tablets,” Clare checks the list off on her fingers. “Anti-depressants, tranquilisers… Oh, and did I mention, medication to counteract the effects of other medication.” Having spent five years in and out of “the system” Clare heard about the Creative Writing course at UEA, then taught by Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. She faxed an application through from the ward, making sure she blacked out the top of the headed paper so “no-one thought she was applying from the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

A few weeks later she was called up for interview. Glancing at her then rebelliously close-cropped hair, nose stud and eyebrow ring, Motion looked down at his notes (which she later surmised must have been headed “Allan, Clare”), before clearing his throat and venturing, “Alan?”

“A look of what I can only describe as pure panic shot across his face when he realised he’s got it wrong,” says Clare. “I could practically hear the sound of the Poet Laureate’s toes curling.” Allan, Clare got a place on the course. It was here she started writing Poppy Shakespeare, a novel that was highly critically acclaimed and has now been made into a Channel 4 feature film, which screened on Monday night. A take-no-patients satire of mental health treatment set on the fictional Dorothy Fish day hospital in North London, Poppy Shakespeare manages to evoke the stark realities of being mentally ill, while still being extremely funny. So how did she pull that one off?

“It was just a case of doing the patients justice. The longer I stayed there the more I realised how people use humour to cope with completely desperate situations,” says Clare, her face serious for once. Although Poppy Shakespeare has been a definite literary success, appearing on the short and long lists of major literary awards including the Orange prize, the subject matter has provoked some fierce debate. “Not surprisingly,” shrugs Clare. “It’s an issue people feel very strongly about.” In such emotive territory, it remains to be seen how people will react to rather more straight-faced approach of the Channel 4 film, in which Clare makes an appearance near the end as the grim-faced Dr. Clooty, wrestling the narrator, played by Anna Maxwell-Martin, to the floor.  So what if the film provokes further controversy? We have skipped desert and Clare is leaning back in the apple-green and black chairs, sipping a double espresso. “Winston Churchill, who suffered from severe depression had a maxim which I find helpful in most situations,” she says with a grin. “Keep buggering on.”

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ANNA MAXWELL MARTIN