OVP: Morgan! (1966)

Film: Morgan-A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966)
Stars: David Warner, Vanessa Redgrave, Robert Stephens, Irene Handl
Director: Karel Reisz
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Costume Design, Best Actress-Vanessa Redgrave)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

If there's any period of Film History that makes me feel like a Philistine, it's probably British New Wave.  While I will admit that, say, the 1980's Action-Hero movies aren't really my cup of tea, on paper the quirky movies of the 1950's and 1960's that came out of that lovely island north of France should appeal to me, but they don't.  This is a problem when I am asked to grade a movie of the era, since I start out with a bit of a resentment against the picture and in particular it's weirdly-specific comedy.

(Spoilers Ahead) And I have to admit that I wasn't able to rise above it all with Morgan!, the 1966 double-Oscar nominee.  The film is about a man who is clearly suffering from a nervous breakdown of sorts, or perhaps has always been mentally-unhinged (we see little in the way to counter this argument), and the film continues on with David Warner (yes, the guy from Titanic) as the title character, frequently devolving into flights of delusion (including most memorably a scene involving King Kong), and occasionally skipping into psychotic episodes that today would be played more for pity or fear than for comedy, but this is the 1960's and it's Britain, so it's all a merry lark.

That may be my biggest issue with movies of this era-they are extremely specific to their time-and-place in a way that's not really relatable today.  Admittedly this is true for the movies of Woody Allen, which I generally enjoy, but the reality is that Woody's films are about love at the end of the day, and I can't really say the same for Morgan!, a movie that sort of exists in its own little world without really inviting us into it.  The film starts in such a way as we are in the middle of the throes of a conversation; don't you have friends like that occasionally?  Ones who start a conversation as if they have already been talking for a minute (my grandmother is famous for this)?  This is what appears to be happening at the beginning of Morgan!, and while it's relatively easy to catch-up, the movie frequently does this throughout the film, assuming the audience will get there eventually when in reality it feels like we're getting cinematic whiplash.

The film received two Oscar nominations, neither of which I'd call particularly adventurous.  This was the final year that the Costume category was split between Black & White and Color films, and you can tell the Academy was scrounging to find viable nominees-the category features two foreign-language films, a James Garner movie no one has ever heard of, Morgan!, and the reason that they clung to B&W that year, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (which easily won despite there being relatively few costumes to trumpet in the picture).  This film features occasionally interesting costume-work (the fitted dresses and flapper hats of Vanessa Redgrave, and of course the famed monkey suit), but there's nothing particularly elegant or extraordinary about what's going on in this department, and it feels like this was nominated more out of a dearth of B&W films than for any other reason.

The film also was nominated for Best Actress, and with all due respect to 1966 and its leading ladies, this may also have been because of the lack of contenders.  Everyone on the planet knew that Elizabeth Taylor would be winning for her career-defining work in Virginia Woolf, and that Lynn Redgrave would be in second place for Georgy Girl (always a bridesmaid, Lynn Redgrave), but they clearly had to struggle to fill up the rest of the category, and I suppose Vanessa Redgrave made the most sense for what was clearly the fifth slot (Ida Kaminska and Anouk Aimee, both starring in major foreign films from the year, probably took the bronze and pewter positions).  After all, Redgrave was having a major moment in her career, appearing in a cameo within Best Picture-winner A Man for All Seasons and was in a highly memorable supporting role in the brilliant (one of my absolute favorite movies) Blow-Up.  Plus, there was the added delight of having her compete against her sister for the trophy (we all know how that turned out with the de Havillands), so she made sense, despite being a pretty mundane role by Academy standards, and really not too extraordinary.  Her work here is almost always overshadowed by the showier Warner and while I like the way that she sometimes seems entirely smitten with him (you can see in her work what the script doesn't give you-that she clearly loved this man once, and usually still does) the work itself seems too light and some of the touches (when she delves into madness so quickly from being disgusted with Warner) don't seem in balance with the work.  All-in-all a seemingly throwaway nomination that we wouldn't really dissect further except that Redgrave would go on to become an acting legend (how strange this citation would look in hindsight if she wasn't insanely famous now).  Plus, there wasn't much else to give an award to that year (surely in sixth place was Virginia McKenna in Born Free, someone more known as an activist today than an actor), so no one's probably going to complain too hard here, even if it's probably going to end up at the bottom of the OVP heap.

Those were my thoughts on this trivial curiosity from Oscar's 1960's obsession with British comedy.  What are yours?  Have you seen Morgan!, and if not, what other famed siblings do you wish had competed against each other?  And between Liz, Anouk, Ida, Lynn, and Vanessa, who is your favorite Best Actress of 1966?  Share in the comments!