The Magic Christian (film)
Encyclopedia
The Magic Christian is a 1969 British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 comedy film
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 directed by Joseph McGrath
Joseph McGrath (film director)
Joseph 'Apocalypse' McGrath , sometimes referred to as "'Apocalypse'" Joe McGrath or Croisette Meubles, is a Scottish film director and screenwriter best remembered for his two films, Casino Royale and The Magic Christian . McGrath frequently collaborated with Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers...

 and starring Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers
Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...

 and Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...

, with noteworthy appearances by John Cleese
John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...

, Raquel Welch
Raquel Welch
Jo Raquel Tejada , better known as Raquel Welch, is an American actress, author and sex symbol. Welch came to attention as a "new-star" on the 20th Century-Fox lot in the mid-1960s. She posed iconically in a animal skin bikini for the British-release One Million Years B.C. , for which she may be...

, Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ is an English actor and musician. Lee initially portrayed villains and became famous for his role as Count Dracula in a string of Hammer Horror films...

, Richard Attenborough
Richard Attenborough
Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough , CBE is a British actor, director, producer and entrepreneur. As director and producer he won two Academy Awards for the 1982 film Gandhi...

 and Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...

. It was loosely adapted from the 1959 comic novel of the same name
The Magic Christian (novel)
The Magic Christian is a 1959 comic novel by American author Terry Southern. In 1969 the novel was made into a film starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, by director Joseph McGrath, also titled The Magic Christian...

 by U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author Terry Southern
Terry Southern
Terry Southern was an American author, essayist, screenwriter and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style...

.

Overview

McGrath's film adaptation differs considerably in content from Southern's novel. Relocated to London in the 1960s, it introduces an orphan
Orphan
An orphan is a child permanently bereaved of or abandoned by his or her parents. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents is called an orphan...

 whom Sir Guy Grand picks up in a park and on a whim decides to adopt. The role was written with Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...

 (who plays it) in mind. The movie is often remembered for its song "Come And Get It
Come and Get It (song)
"Come and Get It" is the name of a song composed by Paul McCartney for the 1969 film The Magic Christian, and made popular by the group Badfinger.-Beatles version:...

" written and produced by Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...

 and performed by Badfinger
Badfinger
Badfinger were a British rock band consisting originally of Pete Ham, Ron Griffiths, Mike Gibbins and Tom Evans, active from 1968 to 1983, and evolving from The Iveys, formed by Ham, Griffiths and David "Dai" Jenkins in Swansea, Wales, in the early 1960s. Joey Molland joined the group in 1969,...

, a Welsh rock band
Rock Band
Rock Band is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems, published by MTV Games and Electronic Arts. It is the first title in the Rock Band series. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions were released in the United States on November 20, 2007, while the PlayStation 2 version was...

 promoted by Apple Records
Apple Records
Apple Records is a record label founded by The Beatles in 1968, as a division of Apple Corps Ltd. It was initially intended as a creative outlet for the Beatles, both as a group and individually, plus a selection of other artists including Mary Hopkin, James Taylor, Badfinger, and Billy Preston...

. The lyrics refer to Grand's schemes of bribing people to act according to his whims ('If you want it, here it is, come and get it'). Thunderclap Newman
Thunderclap Newman
Thunderclap Newman were a British one-hit wonder band that Pete Townshend of The Who and Kit Lambert had formed circa December 1968 - January 1969 in a bid to showcase the talents of John "Speedy" Keen, Andy "Thunderclap" Newman and Jimmy McCulloch....

’s "Something in the Air" is also prominent in the film's soundtrack.

British actor and dancer Lionel Blair
Lionel Blair
Lionel Blair is a British actor, choreographer, tap dancer and television presenter. He is the son of Myer Ogus and Deborah Greenbaum...

 was responsible for the film's choreography. A host of British and American actors (see cast) have brief roles in the movie, many playing against type.

Episodic in character, The Magic Christian is an unrelenting and often heavy-handed satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 on capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

, greed, and human vanities. Notable are the appearances of (pre-Monty Python
Monty Python
Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...

) John Cleese
John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...

 and Graham Chapman
Graham Chapman
Graham Arthur Chapman was a British comedian, physician, writer, actor, and one of the six members of the Monty Python comedy troupe.-Early life and education:...

 (uncredited), who had written an earlier version of the film script, of which only the scenes they appear in survived.

The scene involving the vat containing animal blood, urine and excrement was filmed on London's South Bank
South Bank
South Bank is an area of London, England located immediately adjacent to the south side of the River Thames. It forms a long and narrow section of riverside development that is within the London Borough of Lambeth to the border with the London Borough of Southwark and was formerly simply known as...

 on a stretch of wasteground on which The National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...

 was later built. It was originally planned to film this climactic scene at the Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...

 in New York and, remarkably, the U.S. National Park Service
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...

 agreed to the request. Sellers, Southern and director Joseph McGrath then travelled to New York on the Queen Elizabeth 2 (at a reported cost of US$10,000 per person) but the studio then refused to pay for the shoot and it had to be relocated to London.

Plot

Sir Guy Grand (Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers
Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...

) an eccentric billionaire, together with his newly adopted heir (formerly a homeless derelict), Youngman Grand (Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...

), start playing elaborate practical joke
Practical joke
A practical joke is a mischievous trick played on someone, typically causing the victim to experience embarrassment, indignity, or discomfort. Practical jokes differ from confidence tricks in that the victim finds out, or is let in on the joke, rather than being fooled into handing over money or...

s on people. A big spender, Grand does not mind handing out large sums of money to various people, bribing them to fulfill his whims, or shocking them by bringing down what they hold dear. Their misadventures are designed as a display of father Grand to his adoptive charge that "everyone has their price" - it just depends on the amount one is prepared to pay. They start from rather minor spoofs, like bribing a traffic warden (Spike Milligan
Spike Milligan
Terence Alan Patrick Seán "Spike" Milligan Hon. KBE was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor. His early life was spent in India, where he was born, but the majority of his working life was spent in the United Kingdom. He became an Irish citizen in 1962 after the...

) to take back a parking ticket and eat it (who, delighted by the large bribe, eats its plastic cover too) and proceed with increasingly elaborate stunts involving higher social strata and wider audiences. As a father-son conversation reveals, Grand sees his plots as "educational" ("Well, you know, Youngman, sometimes it's not enough merely to teach. One has to punish as well.").

At Sotheby's art auction house, it is proudly claimed that an original Rembrandt portrait might fetch £10,000, yet to director Mr. Dugdale's (John Cleese
John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...

) astonishment, Grand makes a final offer of £30,000 for it ('Thirty - thousand - pounds? Shit! I beg your pardon, I do beg your pardon!') and having bought it, proceeds, in front of a deeply shocked Dugdale, to cut with his scissors the portrait's nose from the canvas. In a classy restaurant he makes a loud show of wild gluttony, Grand being the restaurant's most prominent customer. In the annual Boat Race sports event, he bribes the Oxford team (where Graham Chapman
Graham Chapman
Graham Arthur Chapman was a British comedian, physician, writer, actor, and one of the six members of the Monty Python comedy troupe.-Early life and education:...

 plays a member of the rowing team) and makes them ram purposely the Cambridge boat, to win a screamingly unjust victory. In a traditional pheasant hunt, he uses an anti-aircraft gun to down the bird.

Grand and Youngman eventually buy tickets for the luxury liner The Magic Christian, along with the richest strata of society. In the beginning everything appears normal and the ship apparently sets off. Yet soon, things start going wrong. A solitary drinker at the bar (Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...

) is approached by a transvestite cabaret singer (Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner was a Russian-born actor of stage and film. He was best known for his portrayal of Mongkut, king of Siam, in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor for the film version; he also played the role more than 4,500 times on...

), Dracula (Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ is an English actor and musician. Lee initially portrayed villains and became famous for his role as Count Dracula in a string of Hammer Horror films...

) poses as a waiter, a cinema show turns out to feature the unfortunately unsuccessful transplant of a black person's head onto a white body. Eventually passengers start noticing through the ship's CCTV
Closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....

 that their Captain (Wilfrid Hyde-White
Wilfrid Hyde-White
Wilfrid Hyde-White was an English character actor.-Early life and career:Wilfrid Hyde White was born at the rectory in Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire, the son of William Edward White, canon of Gloucester Cathedral, and his wife, Ethel Adelaide Drought...

) is in a drunken stupor and finally gets carted off by a gorilla. In a crescendo of panic the guests try to find their way to abandon ship. A group of them, shown the way by Youngman Grand, reach instead the machine-room, which turns out to be powered by hordes of topless rowing slave girls, under the Priestess of the Whip's (Raquel Welch
Raquel Welch
Jo Raquel Tejada , better known as Raquel Welch, is an American actress, author and sex symbol. Welch came to attention as a "new-star" on the 20th Century-Fox lot in the mid-1960s. She posed iconically in a animal skin bikini for the British-release One Million Years B.C. , for which she may be...

) command. As passengers finally find an exit and lords and ladies stumble out in the daylight, we discover that the supposed ship was, in fact, a structure built inside a warehouse, and the passengers had never left London. During the whole misadventure, father and son Grand look perfectly composed and cool.

Towards the end of the film, Guy Grand fills up a huge vat with urine, blood and animal excrement and adds to it thousands of bank notes. Attracting a crowd of onlookers by announcing "Free money!", Grand successfully entices the city's workers to recover the cash. The sequence concludes with many members of the crowd submerging themselves, in order to retrieve money that had sunk beneath the surface, as the song "Something In The Air
Something In The Air (song)
"Something in the Air" is a song recorded by Thunderclap Newman, a band created by Pete Townshend for The Who's former roadie John 'Speedy' Keen who wrote and sang the song, from their only album Hollywood Dream. It was a UK #1 single for three weeks in July 1969...

" by Thunderclap Newman
Thunderclap Newman
Thunderclap Newman were a British one-hit wonder band that Pete Townshend of The Who and Kit Lambert had formed circa December 1968 - January 1969 in a bid to showcase the talents of John "Speedy" Keen, Andy "Thunderclap" Newman and Jimmy McCulloch....

, is heard by the movie's audience.

The film ends with both Guy Grand and Youngman Grand, having returned to the park where the film opened, bribing the park warden to allow them to both now sleep there, stating that this was a more direct method of achieving their (mostly unstated) ends.

Reception

Most mainstream critics have been quite negative on the film, especially for its extensive use of black humour. Darrel Baxton, in his review for Splitting Image, refers to the film as of "the school of savage sub-Bunuelian satire".
Christopher Null in filmcritic.com states that "it's way too over-the-top to make any profound statement".

The underlying theme of the movie was considered to be that people will do anything requested of them, no matter how unpleasant or humiliating, so long as they are offered enough money. The relentlessly spiteful and sadistic way in which this is explored by the movie may have influenced its cool reception in 1969.

In his study of homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

 in films The Celluloid Closet
The Celluloid Closet
The Celluloid Closet is a 1996 American documentary film directed and written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The film is based on the 1981 book of the same name written by Vito Russo, and on previous lecture and film clip presentations given in person by Russo 1972–82.Russo researched the...

, author Vito Russo
Vito Russo
Vito Russo was an American LGBT activist, film historian and author who is best remembered as the author of the book The Celluloid Closet ....

 states (on page 184) that "Yul Brynner in drag sings Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

's 'Mad About the Boy
Mad About the Boy
Dinah Washington's 1952 recording of "Mad about the Boy" is possibly the most widely known version of the song in modern times. The 6/8-time arrangement for voice and jazz orchestra by Quincy Jones omits two verses and was recorded in the singer's native Chicago on the Mercury label.Washington's...

' while the 'fag' jokes fly in a viciously homophobic film".

Cast

In popular culture

  • In the posters for Chevy Chase
    Chevy Chase
    Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase is an American comedian, writer, and television and film actor, born into a prominent entertainment industry family. Chase worked a plethora of odd jobs before moving into comedy acting with National Lampoon...

    's 1985 movie Fletch
    Fletch (film)
    Fletch is a 1985 comedy film about a wisecracking investigative newspaper reporter, Irwin M. Fletcher , who writes under the name of Jane Doe...

    , Chase's character shows a fake ID of himself as an afro-wearing basketball
    Basketball
    Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

     player, named "Magic Christian".
  • The episode of The Simpsons
    The Simpsons
    The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...

    entitled "Homer vs. Dignity
    Homer vs. Dignity
    "Homer vs. Dignity" is the fifth episode of the The Simpsons’ twelfth season, first broadcast by Fox on November 26, 2000. In the episode, Mr...

    " follows the film's plot line to a point.
  • Writer Grant Morrison
    Grant Morrison
    Grant Morrison is a Scottish comic book writer, playwright and occultist. He is known for his nonlinear narratives and counter-cultural leanings, as well as his successful runs on titles like Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, The Invisibles, New X-Men, Fantastic Four, All-Star Superman, and...

     named "The Magic Christian" as an inspiration for his Batman Incorporated series.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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