Comédie loufoque, UK, 1966, 97 min.
Réalisation : Karel Reisz
Avec : David Warren, Vanessa Redgrave, Robert Stephens, Irene Handl …
Ce film de 1966, dans la mouvance du Free Cinema, déborde de fantaisie et de provocation dans l’Angleterre sage et conventionnelle des sixties. On sent poindre un vent de liberté, d’insouciance et de folie annonciateur de 1968. Morgan est un jeune artiste dont l’épouse (jouée par Vanessa Redgrave) demande le divorce. Déterminé à la retenir, il continue de la poursuivre de ses assiduités en accumulant gaffes, comportements loufoques et situations cocasses. Issu de la classe ouvrière qui honore Trotski et Karl Marx, il évolue dans le milieu auquel appartient sa femme, la haute bourgeoisie, de manière totalement décalée et inattendue. Morgan, interprété par David Warner, est un personnage de doux rêveur (ou de fou à lier ?) auquel on s’attache immanquablement, ne serait-ce que pour son petit grain de fantaisie.
Il y a deux ans le festival a programmé un film de Lindsay Anderson, produit par Reisz, This Sporting Life. Le film qui a révélé le talent de Reisz est Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1961).
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A zany comedy, UK, 1966, 97min.
Director: Karel Reisz,
With: David Warren, Vanessa Redgrave, Robert Stephens, Irene Handl …
This very sixties film, influenced by the Free Cinema movement and set in the staid and conventional England of that era, is provocative and loaded with fantasy. We feel the dawning of a wave of freedom, carefree attitudes and the madness that was to herald the events of 1968. Morgan is a young artist whose wife (played by Vanessa Redgrave) is asking for a divorce. Determined to stop her from leaving, he continues to ply her with his charms, provoking a string of blunders, crazy behaviour and comical situations. Born into a working class family which swears by Trotsky and Karl Marx, he must now move in the upper middle class circles of his wife, with completely off-beat and unexpected consequences. Morgan, played by David Warner, is a dreamer (or perhaps just stark-raving mad?) who we inevitably become attached to, even if it is only due to his idyllic views.
Two years ago the British Film Festival in Nantes showed another of Karel Reisz’s films, The Sporting Life (1963).