MORGAN - A SUITABLE CASE FOR TREATMENT

UK, 1966, 97 minutes, Black and white.
David Warner, Vanessa Redgrave, Robert Stephens, Irene Handl, Bernard Bresslaw.
Directed by Karel Reisz.

Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment was a star vehicle for David Warner, a stage actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company who had appeared in a number of films including Tom Jones as the villain, Blifil. After making this film he made a few more in England and then went for a successful career for many decades in the United States in film and television. He returned to England in the 1990s. It was also a star vehicle for Vanessa Redgrave who was emerging from stage performances with a cameo in this year in A Man For All Seasons. Karel Reisz was soon to direct her in Isadora and she also appeared in Blow Up.

The film reflects the zany aspects of the 1960s and its social changes. David Warner portrays a young man who is eccentric, self-absorbed, who does his own thing and finds his finally in an institution and divorced from his wife. She is played by Vanessa Redgrave.

The film was well liked in its time. Vanessa Redgrave won an Oscar nomination for it as well as winning the best actress award in Cannes. The film was screened in competition there. The screenplay by well-appreciated playwright David Mercer won a BAFTA award for best screenplay.

Czech-born Karel Reisz made short films in the 1950s with such directors as Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson. His breakthrough film was Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. He also later directed The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

1. The impact of the title, especially A Suitable Case for Treatment? The impact if the title and its relevance to the film? The tone of madness and cure?

2. How important was the black and white photography, the use of white, the music, the style such as frozen frames etc? The visualising of fantasies in reality?

3. How typical of British 1950s and 1960s drama was this? The standards of living and of humanity? The picture of society, sensible and mad? Prisoner of fantasy, creator of fantasy? King Kong and Tarzan fantasies of an English madman? How effective an insight into British society was this drama comedy?

4. Could Morgan be seen as an Everyman figure? Disintegrating? fantasy, mad, unable to cope with the pressures of life, the victim of society and history? Or is the figure of Morgan much more slight?

5. Was Morgan explored as a character? Or was he a comic caricature? His background, his mother, Communism, his relationship with Walter and his talks with his mother? How had he married Leonie? What had gone wrong? His capacity for responsibility? Failure in marriage? The victim of his fantasies, the creator of them? Enjoying his fantasies? Escaping from reality? Self created hero? The malice and goodness of his fantasies? The fulness of his madness? The reality of his love for Leonie? Where had he arrived at the end of the film? Had he any future?

6. The comment on British society especially via Marxism? the Cockney Marxists? The police and the ridicule of the police? The contrast of rich and poor? The pretensions of society etc? The hypocrisy of law? The destructive nature of society at the end?

7. How did Leonie contrast with Morgan? Her sense and her sensibility? Unable to cope with Morgan? Her decision to marry Napier as sensible? Her being kidnapped and failing to respond to Morgan's idyllic holiday? The influence of her parents and the hold over her? The hold of Napier over her? Whose child was she bearing at the end?

8. How did the film show the contrast between Napier and Morgan? Who was sensible and who was mad? Their comparative roles in society? Their relationship with Leonie?

9. Morgan's mother and her character? Her thinking of him as a traitor? Her advice? The influence of Wally in the film?

10. How amusing were Morgan's antics in themselves? Their total effect for the film? The hammer and sickle on the rug? His camping outside her house, the wiring of the house for Napier's and Leonie's kitchen, the bomb for the mother-in-law Did Morgan deserve prison for these?

11. Was the final firing squad in the rubbish dump adequately symbolic? The defeat of Morgan?


12. How was Morgan a failure? How pessimistic was the film? The misfit rebel who does not succeed? The madman in modern society?

13. How much truth was told via madness and comedy?