Little Malcolm (1974)
A Film by Stuart Cooper
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | PAL 16:9 | 01:47:44 | 7,70 Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 320 Kbps | Subs: English SDH
Genre: Comedy, Drama | UK
A Film by Stuart Cooper
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | PAL 16:9 | 01:47:44 | 7,70 Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 320 Kbps | Subs: English SDH
Genre: Comedy, Drama | UK
Delusional revolutionary Malcolm Scrawdyke (a mesmerising John Hurt) leads his Party of Dynamic Erection - Wick (John McEnery), Irwin (Raymond Platt) and Nipple (David Warner) - in an enraged battle against an unseen nemesis in this chilling dark comedy. Financed by George Harrison and based on the celebrated stage play by David Halliwell, Little Malcolm was shot in wintry Oldham by director Stuart Cooper (Overlord) and cinematographer John Alcott (A Clockwork Orange). It won the Silver Bear at the 1974 Berlin Film Festival.
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In the grim surroundings of a wintry Oldham, Malcolm Scrawdyke (Hurt) is a student and would-be revolutionary who attends an art college. Obsessed with the idea that Allard, a lecturer who we never see, is conspiring against him, he recruits fellow students Nipple (Warner), Wick (McEnery), and Irwin (Platt) to join him in opposing this force of reaction. The group calls itself the Party of Dynamic Erection and their mission is to fight against the massed forces of orthodoxy, the Eunuchs. Unfortunately, much of their political activity consists of sitting around making plans for action and not actually doing anything. This inability to perform is mirrored in Malcolm's relationship with Ann (Ayres); their love-life being hampered by Malcolm's impotence.
There are some wonderful things in Little Malcolm. The basic narrative set-up – incompetents attempting revolution – has an Ealingesque charm and is reminiscent of Chris Morris’ recent black comedy Four Lions featuring a group of equally inadequate would-be Jihadists; it’s notable that Morris’ film also featured a startling shift in tone towards the end much like Cooper’s. The comic appeal of the central character Malcolm lies in the contrast between his rhetoric and his inability to act, a device which stretches back to Hamlet and may also remind us of David Thewlis’ Johnny in Mike Leigh’s Naked. Certainly, Johnny’s spleen is very similar to Malcolm’s and this may not be coincidental given that Mike Leigh directed the original production of Little Malcolm in the 1960s.
The film, remarkably faithful to David Halliwell's original play, is often hilariously funny, from the opening monologue during which Malcolm debates the thorny question of whether or not to get out of bed to the beautifully written and staged set-piece in which the group plan their abduction of Allard. This scene demonstrates that Cooper is capable of far more than simply respecting the dialogue and performances - he gives the film a giddy comic spin and certainly it is far more visually distinguished than many filmed plays, thanks to John Alcott's atmospheric cinematography. This tone is captured perfectly in the acting by the leading quartet who make the Dynamic Erectionists deeply funny without pretending they are anything but pathetic. One sequence in which Warner argues about the colour of a jacket is a fantastic bit of cross-talk comedy.
But perhaps the most striking thing about the film, apart from the exceptional performances, is the skill with which, towards the end, it changes from almost farcical black comedy into something much more disturbing. The key to the tonal shift is the show trial of Nipple, a set-piece which Cooper directs with unerring poise. It’s the scene in which the parallels with Stalinism become, perhaps a little heavy-handedly, clear. Nipple is given the chance to plead either “Guilty” or “Very Guilty” to a ludicrous trumped-up charge and is denied the chance to present a defence. The proceedings are conducted with malicious eloquence by Wick and presided over in a wearily autocratic fashion by Malcolm who has come to believe in all the nonsense made up over a pint of beer in the pub. The casualness with which the ultimate sentence is delivered still has the power to shock because it reflects the way in which totalitarianism traduces the individual and David Warner’s performance is notable for its evocation of a mixture of confusion and desolation.
Once this major set-piece has been played out, the tone darkens even further as Malcolm is at the receiving end of a thoroughly justified tirade from Ann. After sitting and listening – and seemingly detemining to change his ways – Malcolm turns on Ann and, with the newly arrived assistance of Wick and Irwin, decides to punish her. The beating she receives is not especially graphic but it is brutal and prolonged, startling not only in its ferocity but also in its sheer randomness. The comedy of the first hour of the film finally dies and is replaced by a sense of outrage. Malcolm’s delusions are stripped away from him but it seems to occur at other people’s expense. The message is a little thudding but is made completely clear – the inescapability of violence as a inevitable result of revolution and the equally unavoidable resort to misogyny. The ending is as shocking and upsetting as it is meant to be and one's view of the 'heroes' changes from amused tolerance to sheer disgust.
The synopsis really says it all. The film plays like a rallying cry against the bourgeois establishment gone horribly wrong. John Hurt's charismatic Malcolm is booted from his art school after stirring up some trouble or other, and is attended to by a couple of acolytes desperately in need of a leader. Little Malcolm is an exploration of megalomania, and its effects in a micro setting, and let me tell you, it isn't pretty.
Malcolm is a dick. He's an unpleasant little man with dreams of grandeur and a persecution complex, much like most megalomaniacs. He disguises his general misanthropy in the cloak of revolution, and when he talks about the "eunuchs", he is simply referring to those in any establishment who have rejected him. The clearest analogy to draw from Little Malcolm is a young Adolf Hitler. A man who was rejected from art school and took his rage, internalized it and then starting shouting at everyone that it was their fault that he was a failure. The only real difference is that people listened to Hitler.
For the vast majority of the film's run time, Malcolm is really grating, almost to the point that I wanted to turn the film off. However, there is a third act turn that really helps to give him some depth and not necessarily redeem the film, but certainly to end it on a high note. The film doesn't work without the ending, and this particular climax is brilliantly played and truly turns Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs, from a chore to a masterpiece!
Special Features:
- Original Little Malcolm trailer
- Put Yourself In My Place (Francine Winham, 1974, 25 mins): fraught gender relations trigger a startling role reversal in this polemical comedy starring Judy Geeson (Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush)
- The Contraption (James Dearden, 1977, 7 mins): in a final act of defeat or defiance, a man (Richard O’Brien) builds a sinister contraption in a dark cellar
Many Thanks to GuyG.
No More Mirrors.