Call Me Genius

Despite the fact that it's written by Tony himself with Galaton and Simpson's assitance, and that it's beginning and ending are set at the hotel where Hancock resided in the last season, this film feels quite different from "Hancock's Half hour".

However it overcomes it's shortcomings, has a good number of laughs with snappy one-liners and makes me look foward to seeing "The Punch and Judy man" ( another Hancock film ).

7.5/10

( Rated G/U due to the absence of offensive content )

Tony Hancock was the biggest British comedian of the late 50s and early 60s. Viewing his two (not entirely representative) films and watching (and listening) to his "Half-Hour" comedy shows (running separately, if concurrently, on BBC television and radio), young people (those under 35 or so) will probably find this fact baffling unless they are extraordinarily well-informed about social conditions in immediately postwar Britain. There also seems to be a kind of gender barrier. Women of my acquaintance, even those that satisfy the fairly stringent criteria I detail in my previous sentence, seem to have found Hancock uniformly unfunny.

Hancock's humour, it must be said, was unconventional. It is entirely driven by the dialectic, if you will, between character and situation. Hancock loathed gags, and forbade his scriptwriters (usually the brilliant duo of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson) to indulge in them. It is also exceptionally restricted in time (late 50s), social class ("shabby-genteel" lower-middle) and place (the south-east of England). Yet Hancock, who bestrode Britain like a colossus in his heyday, nurtured the powerful delusion that he could succeed in America.

It would take an amazing act of empathy on the part of an American to penetrate Hancock's humour as displayed in his radio and TV shows. As a technician he was flawless, possessing a sense of comic timing unequalled by anybody in Britain except the probably equally unexportable Kenneth Williams (perhaps best known outside the UK because of his strong involvement in the "Carry-On" series of films). Needless to say, Hancock and Williams, the two greatest British comedians of all time, loathed and vilified each other.

"The Rebel" (pointedly re-christened "Call Me Genius" in the America Hancock was desperate to impress) was released to great disappointment in 1961. In hindsight it has gained in favour, its initial cool reception a matter of some puzzlement.

Hancock, in the film, is an office drudge who harbours artistic ambitions way beyond his hopelessly limited technical skills. However, he jettisons his boring day-job to share an artistic garret in Paris (only 200 or so miles from London) with a frustrated, but genuinely talented, young artist (Paul Massie). Hancock's infantile daubs are hailed as works of genius in the pretentious circles he inhabits. Galton and Simpson's screenplay wastes no opportunity to satirise the credulity of the modern-art world, and its unfailing capacity to court lucrative charlatans.

Can those outside the British Isles understand this film? I hope so. The office environment and lodgings Hancock occupies are stultifying, but the artistic world of Paris is shown to be as corrupt and foolish in its own way (NB. the identically uniformed "Existentialists", indistinguishable, in a sense, from their bowler-hatted counterparts with whom Hancock works in central London). Art does get a slightly better press in this film than commerce, since the possibility of genuine artistic talent (i.e. Paul's (Hancock's young flatmate and protégé)) is acknowledged. Nevertheless, the presence of trend-hungry buffoons within the artistic world (e.g. George Sanders' art dealer) indicates the interpenetration of the commercial and artistic worlds. Is art-dealing George Sanders any less a despicable entrepreneur than Hancock's erstwhile manager in his City of London counting-house, John le Mesurier?

Although we speak essentially the same language (I think the differences are often over-stated), cultural barriers remain between the UK and the US. However, Americans would do well to look closely at Tony Hancock, partly for his intrinsic value, and partly for the huge influence, conscious and unconscious, he has wielded over the British psyche (here I controversially include Ireland, which remains culturally close to the UK). His second feature-film ("The Punch And Judy Man"), while telling in its own way, is less valuable overall, both inside the UK (and its satellites) and beyond.

An often overlooked and underrated Hancock vehicle as the Lad from East Cheam inadvertently becomes the toast of the art world when his flatmate's paintings are accidentally attributed to him instead of his own primitive childish daubs.

Great ensemble cast with John Le Mesurier as his boss, the sublime Irene Handl as his landlady Mrs Cravat and George Sanders as his pompous artistic agent.

At the films' centre is a sharp and nicely played critique of the hypocrisy and snobbishness of the art world with the usual taut Galton and Simpson script full of smart one liners.

"What's that?" asks Mrs Cravat looking at a bright pink picture of a man in a beret. "It's a self portrait" replies Hancock. "Who of?" counters Mrs Cravat.

Look out for a very young Nanette Newman as an Existentialist acolyte in the party scene and also Oliver Reed as a cafe artist.

8/10

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.

I remember seeing The Rebel, on general release, in Croydon - three or four miles from where the railway scenes were shot: a bygone branch line and now demolished station off Coombe Road. (We used to walk past it a couple of times each week in the 1950s in the Elmhurst 'crocodile' to play sports at Lloyd Park. Happy days, indeed.) Unfortunately, I have never been very comfortable with the film - and I have persevered with it over the years. The Hancock attitude quickly wears thin and the script is simply below par for these writers. Best scenes, apart from the nostalgia element, are those with Irene Handl; Margit Saad (best known to me from Magnificent Two)is easy on the eye, as ever, but must have been embarrassed with her banal Margot character.

Nevertheless, I am pleased that the picture has its adherents. Where is Margit Saad today? A directorial credit around 1990 and seemingly nothing since.