Call Me Genius

Moviecut—Call Me Genius

source: Call Me Genius

The film starts off with great promise, Hancock is on great form and so his co-stars, direction and cinematography is all great, but for me the story goes dry when he elopes to Paris. It loses much of its humour and becomes a art piece, most of the humour of the hard bitten Londoner Handcock is devolved Into the strange world of young eccentric Paris artists and painters., a long cry from the writers Galton & Simpsons Railway cuttings, Eastcheam adventures of the Hancock Tv series. A lost opportunity, the first half is great, what a shame it didn't stay in London and employ a certain Sidney James to further the plot.

Tony is trapped in the drudgery of a 9-5:30 office job. But at night he is an artist who has great talent and vision (he believes). When he decides to quit his job and move to France he falls in with a group of artists who admire the `childlike' quality to his work. However when he passes another artists work off as his own and gets signed by a major agent he begins to get over his head in trouble. For fans of Hancock's Half Hour on the BBC this film will represent strange new ground – an extension of the short concise stories with depression being the overriding source of Hancock's comedy. Here the story sees him less put down and more of a winner – this removes a lot of what made him funny. However the story still has wit as Hancock makes fun of the pretentious art crowd and makes fun of his own inability to paint. However the running time is perhaps too long to sustain and much of the comedy is such that it could easily have been done by anyone – rarely is Hancock's unique style allowed material to work with. Hancock is still good though, and him misfiring is still funny. George Sanders has an interesting role and it's always good to see John Le Mesurier in anything. However at times you can't help feeling that Sid James could have been added somewhere. In fact the whole film would have been better modelled around the format of the TV and radio shows. Overall this is the film failing – it is stretched and, for most of the second half, it's comedy is not the usual Hancock fare that so many loved. It's funny but it'll make you seek out tapes and videos of his classic shows.

This superb film features Tony Hancock quitting his boring office job for the artist's life in Paris. Despite the fact that he can't paint or sculpt (his 'Aphrodite At The Waterhole' is excrutiatingly awful) he thinks he is a genius and soon gets a reputation as such. He wins fame and fortune with the paintings of Paul Massie who had given up art and moved back to England for a boring office job. The early part of the film features a cameo by Oliver Reed as one of a group of artists arguing drunkenly about what is art in a Parisien cafe. The script was written by Galton & Simpson and draws heavily on some of the excellent Hancock's Half Hour radio series (particularly the Poetry Society) which they wrote. Irene Handl is superb as Mrs Crevatte, Hancock's London landlady (also Paul's when he leaves Paris) and the film is full of some of the best British actors of the day (George Sanders, Peter Bull, John Le Mesurier, Dennis Price etc.). This is one film I was itching to see come out on DVD and it has, paired with The Punch & Judy Man. Wonderful stuff indeed.

I am 57 now and was weaned when I was a lad on the various BBC tv series of "Hancock's Half Hour in the 1950's.I became an addict there and then.In later life I carefully recorded the repeats on my vcr (not invented when I was a lad), and purchased cassettes of Tony's earlier radio shows whenever a new volume was available for sale.I have read his biography (1924 - his suicide in Australia in 1968), so he was only 44 when he died.Forget he had a drink problem and could be violent. Yes, he considered he had outgrown his tv series with Sid James (and Kenneth Williams earlier) and even his later solo "Hancock" tv series from 1959 onwards.As a previous literate reviewer has rightly remarked, he hankered after a wider international audience for his comic abilities and appeared in later films like "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" even trying his hand in Hollywood with Walt Disney but I consider "The Rebel" from 1961 as his funniest film.It incorporates many characters like the existentialist lady on the big screen who have been heard before, e.g. Fenella Fielding in the radio show "The East Cheam Poetry Festival" from 1954.John le Mesurier often played "establishment" figures in his half hour shows and was a personal friend and here he plays Hancock's authoritarian boss in the dreary office where we first see him in an almost synchronised early scene where the clerks all do a similar computation function simultaneously.How we office workers with aspirations of individual creativity empathise with him in his rebellious behaviour!! A new "Mrs Cravatte" in the shape of Irene Handle (not Patricia Hayes who was merely a char lady in the tv series), provides a female comic foil as Tony's landlady.It is interesting he retains his real name in this feature film, presumably he considered he could effectivly develop his bohemian character from the tv onto the broader canvas.I revisited this film after 20 years or so and laughed out loud in several places.The point already made that American/overseas viewers may be perplexed with his humour is easy to understand and our current UK generation may be left cold by it.My generation however which was reared on a diet of post war food rationing, spivs, watching wealthy Americans in the media, the McMillan type establishment figures in politics and industry, trends in fashion, pop music etc; can so empathise with his humour.I gave it 7/10.

When my sister first saw Chrissie Hynde on TV singing 'Kid' in 1979, she remarked "It's Nanette Newman!" The reason for this unlikely observation was that she'd recently seen Ms Newman with matching blue lips and nails as a West Bank existentialist in this film, who declares "Why kill time when you can kill yourself?" (An unbilled Jean Marsh is also in it, but sadly Marianne Stone isn't present to complete a gothic threesome.) The biggest challenge the makers had was probably coming up with paintings that were supposed to be the work of an individual genuinely without talent, since inevitably they'd look like the work of SOMEONE (to me the daubs they came up with resembled Matisse; the genuinely gifted painter played by Paul Massie plausibly claimed to be influenced by Cezanne). As befits a film about the corrupting influence of money upon the art world, the film's real star is probably Gilbert Taylor's pristine Technicolor photography. The producers even splashed out on genuine Parisian locations; but it would probably have been funnier had he remained in East Cheam. Considering that the film mentions the empty years of wage-slavery that lay ahead of his character in a job he'd already been doing for fourteen years, it's sadly ironic watching Hancock to know now how little future actually lay ahead of him (he even says "You wait until I'm dead. You'll all know I'm right!") Ditto George Sanders, who nearly two decades earlier had taken the Gauguin route himself in 'The Moon and Sixpence'.

This is one of those films I watch every few years and which seems funnier on every occasion. There are those who cannot connect with the Hancock of the TV shows, their grainy black and white images seemingly confirming him as a fixture from a period long ago, a world of men with cloth caps on football terraces, smoky pubs and adverts for Capstan Full Strength. Seeing him in colour in more glamorous surroundings can make him more relevant to a modern age, not least because the digs at a world of art, widely suspected as having its share of pseuds and hucksters, still ring true. These scenes came in for criticism for taking Hancock out of his usual context, but I find them among the most amusing viewed today. The film's only weakness is the encounter with the vivacious Margit Saad, though only because it is allowed to prolong. Hancock was never going to attain the success he craved in the US of his day, because his comedy in whatever milieu, like that of his predecessor Will Hay, was essentially about failure, and in his case of being a social misfit in a specifically British context. With an excellent supporting cast, and first-rate script from the peerless Galton and Simpson, he proves again that if not exactly a genius, he was one of the most original and funniest comedy actors Britain has produced.

Tony Hancock's screen debut was in a frightful 1954 'comedy' set on an army base entitled 'Orders Are Orders' ( it also squandered the talents of Peter Sellers and Sidney James ). 'The Rebel', however, was by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson and marked the one and only outing on the big screen for 'Anthony Aloysius St.John Hancock' from Railway Cuttings, East Cheam. Hancock is trapped in a dead end 9-5 job, having to commute to work each morning by train ( shades of 'Reginald Perrin' ) in the company of men in bowler hats who have nothing to say to one another. He dreams of being a great artist in spite of having zero talent, and is currently working on a grotesque sculpture of Aphrodite back at his digs, much to the disgust of landlady Mrs.Crevatte ( Irene Handl in a role played previously by Patricia Hayes ). He decides to go to Paris to become a great painter. Moving in with a young Englishman named Paul ( Paul Massie ), Hancock charms the locals into thinking he is some kind of genius. When a disillusioned Paul moves out, he leaves his paintings - which are brilliant - behind. Art critic Sir Charles Brewer ( George Sanders ) mistakes these for Hancock's work, and suddenly our hero is the toast of Gay Paree... In their book 'Sunday Times Guide To Movies', Angela and Elkan Allan said that one of the tragedies of Hancock's life was that he never met a director who could take his particular brand of comedy and distill it for the cinema. 'The Rebel' was directed by Robert Day, whose other credits include several 'Tarzan' films and episodes of 'The Avengers' series. He does a fair job on the whole, but it would have been interesting to see what Ronald Neame or Charles Crichton might have done with it. Hancock dominates every scene he is, and projects more personality than a lot of other television comedians turned movie stars. The script is good, making digs at the pretentiousness of modern art and art lovers, although there are some longueurs here and there, most notably Jim Smith's ( Dennis Price ) party, and Hancock's problems with the sex-mad wife ( Margit Saad ) of millionaire Carreras ( Gregoire Aslan ). In the 'beat generation' you can see the beginnings of what ultimately became the hippie movement ( how chilling is it now to hear Josey ( Nanette Newman ) say: "why kill time when you can kill yourself?" in the knowledge that Hancock did just that only seven years later ). Good supporting cast, many of whom had worked with Tony before such as Hugh Lloyd, Liz Fraser, Mario Fabrizi and the peerless John Le Mesurier. Peter Bull and Mervyn Jones play art gallery managers. A young Oliver Reed is one of Paul's friends. The writers wanted to give Sid James a cameo but Hancock vetoed it because he wished to prove he could work on the big screen on his own. 'The Rebel' was a success, and Hancock planned to make more films, but in the event only one - the marvellous 'The Punch & Judy Man' ( 1963 ) - materialised.

Tony Hancock is brilliant as an artist who gets lucky in the snooty world of early '60s art. Acclaimed by many as Britain's greatest comic genius, this film, still strangely underrated, is a great vehicle for Hancock's droll quips. He plays a character, Anthony Hancock (!), who is frustrated by his boring life, and who wants to be a successful painter and sculptor. He goes to Paris and meets up with fellow artists, including one character played by a very young Oliver Reed. Hancock's best friend is Paul Ashby (Paul Massie), who introduces his English friend to the Bohemians and beatniks of Paris. Despite saying to a white-faced, blue-lipped Nanette Newman, "You do eat food, don't you?", and, on seeing an action painting, sneering "Who's gone raving mad here", the arty types think he's a genius. But, he's not too proud to adapt, and creates an action painting himself, partly with a bicycle, with his newly acquired, beautiful brown cow, Ermintrude, a bemused onlooker. After finishing the painting, he's not humble: "That's worth two thousand quid of anybody's money, that is." When Hancock's friend, and really talented artist Paul leaves Paris - as yet another disillusioned artist - he leaves Hancock his work, and tells him he can do what he wants with the pictures. Hancock looks at Paul's work, and says, with hilarious ignorance, "It's just not there, is it?" Snobby smug art dealer Sir Charles Broward (George Sanders) gets to hear of the new 'genius (Hancock)', pays him a visit, and makes a beeline for Paul's art, despite Hancock's attempts at telling Broward they're not his (Hancock's), and tries to interest Broward with his own stuff, which includes the classic foot painting! Broward thinks Hancock's just trying to help a friend, and organises an exhibition of Paul's art under Hancock's name, before our Tone can say 'no'. Hancock soon gets into the the swim as the celebrity artist, swanning into 'his' exhibition dressed up to the nines. But things go wrong when he does a rather unflattering sculpture of a rich shipping magnate's wife - who tries to seduce the innocent Hancock. Having enough of the limelight, and the pitfalls of fame, and feeling he should help his friend, Hancock finally tells Broward, at an exhibition of his 'new' work, supplied unknowingly by Paul, that Paul did all the good stuff on display, and that he, Hancock, did all the rubbish. Realising this, Broward sweeps past Hancock, and sucks up to Paul - in a hilariously outrageous, but typical example of the shallow falseness of showbiz, and the artistic world. Hancock returns to his former landlady, Mrs. Crevatte (mischievously played by Irene Handl), and uses her as his model, as he attempts to improve on his dreadful sculpting skills. He sculpts another 'Aphrodite at the Waterhole' in an attempt to prove the critics wrong. Let's hope so... Paul Rance/booksmusicfilmstv.com. This article was originally published here: http://www.booksmusicfilmstv.com/TheRebel.htm