# O Lucky Man!
**O Lucky Man!** is a 1973 British black comedy directed by [Lindsay Anderson](https://www.edgepedia.org/lindsay-anderson), written by David Sherwin, and starring [Malcolm McDowell](https://www.edgepedia.org/malcolm-mcdowell) as Mick Travis, an ambitious young coffee salesman whose journey through England becomes a picaresque (episodic tale of a roguish hero's wandering adventures) satire of British society. It is the middle film of the loose trilogy that began with *If....* (1968) and ended with *Britannia Hospital* (1982), and it is built around songs written and performed by [Alan Price](https://www.edgepedia.org/alan-price), the former keyboardist of The Animals.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) • [2](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director / writer | Lindsay Anderson; screenplay by David Sherwin, from an original idea by Malcolm McDowell[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) |
| Release | London opening week of 25 March 1973; Cannes screening May 1973; New York opening 13 June 1973[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) |
| Running time | 186 minutes at Cannes and in London; the American release removed nine minutes[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) |
| Music | Songs written and performed by Alan Price; BAFTA for Film Music (Anthony Asquith Award), 1974[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) • [3](https://www.flicks.co.uk/movie/o-lucky-man/) |
| Cast device | Nearly every featured actor plays two or three roles; Price and his band appear as a musical chorus[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) |
| Awards | BAFTAs for Film Music (Price) and Best Supporting Actor (Arthur Lowe); nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) |
| Production | 20 March to mid-August 1972, in England and Scotland[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) |
## Spoilers
### Story and structure
Mick Travis, a fresh-faced trainee coffee salesman, is assigned the whole of northern England when his predecessor disappears. His rounds expose a landscape of closed factories, corrupt police, and town officials who belong to a sex club, and the episodes grow steadily darker: he is mistaken for a spy on a secret military base, caught in apocalyptic war games, and nearly recruited for a grotesque transplant experiment at a remote clinic run by Professor Millar (Graham Crowden). A chance meeting with a touring rock band carries him back to London, where he goes to work for the tycoon Sir James Burgess ([Ralph Richardson](https://www.edgepedia.org/ralph-richardson)), who is selling lethal chemical weapons to an African dictator. Framed by his employers, Travis goes to prison and emerges as an idealistic social activist, trading one naive worldview for another.[2](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole) • [5](https://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s2490man.html)
The film opens with a card reading "Once upon a time" and a fabricated silent film about a South American laborer punished for stealing coffee beans, with McDowell as the thief. Its sections are separated by titles announcing West, North, South, and East End, each area marked by a different social class, and scenes are punctuated by brief all-black screens, inserted documentary footage, and typed titles.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) Anderson described the picture as "a completely picaresque story in which the hero goes from one adventure to another," saying the episodic form emerged when he realized in editing that efforts at smooth transitions were a waste of time.[6](https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/api/collection/CLATL/id/3830/download)
### The ending
The final scene blurs fact and fiction. McDowell plays a version of his real self, an aspiring actor auditioning for a film directed by Anderson, who appears as himself; the director slaps "Mick Travis" across the face with a script, and Mick slowly smiles. Critics read the moment variously, some as surrender to hypocrisy and others as optimism. Anderson called it, "in traditional Zen terms," Mick's "moment of illumination," and told *The Times* it was "an ironic evocation... of the Zen attitude to living, which is to love life and accept it and to smile the right kind of smile and to not ask why."[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) • [2](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole) The film closes with the entire cast and crew dancing among balloons as if at a wrap party, ending on an iris freeze-frame of McDowell.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN)
## Origin and development
The film grew out of McDowell's own life. Before acting, he had worked briefly as a coffee salesman in [Yorkshire](https://www.edgepedia.org/yorkshire) in the mid 1960s, and soon after *If....* won the [Palme d'Or](https://www.edgepedia.org/palme-dor) at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival he pitched Anderson an autobiographical story about a traveling salesman.[2](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole) • [4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1082416/o-lucky-man) The project was first titled *Coffee Man*, and McDowell began the treatment around 1965, according to a 1973 *Rolling Stone* interview cited by the AFI Catalog.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN)
Anderson rejected the first draft as too "mini" and conventional, and pushed for something larger, citing Voltaire's *Candide*, Kafka's *Amerika*, Swift's *Gulliver's Travels*, and [Thornton Wilder](https://www.edgepedia.org/thornton-wilder)'s *Heaven's My Destination* as models. "O Lucky Man! was conceived as an epic," Anderson recalled in a 1994 interview, "not an epic in the sense of Ben-Hur but in the classical, poetic sense of the term."[2](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole) McDowell brought the work in progress to screenwriter David Sherwin during the shooting of [Stanley Kubrick](https://www.edgepedia.org/stanley-kubrick)'s *[A Clockwork Orange](https://www.edgepedia.org/a-clockwork-orange-film)* (1971), and Sherwin expanded the series of adventures, many drawn from real events.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1082416/o-lucky-man) The title was McDowell's suggestion of "Lucky Man"; Anderson added the "O" (echoing his own short film *O Dreamland*) and the exclamation mark.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1082416/o-lucky-man)
The gestation was slow and troubled. In his published diaries, *Going Mad in Hollywood – and Life with Lindsay Anderson* (1996), Sherwin documented the project's chaos: Anderson repeatedly threatened to cancel, and Sherwin, in a love triangle with his wife and mistress, went through spells of suicidal depression and spent a short time in a mental health clinic in late 1971.[2](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole) Even during production, Sherwin had not finished the script, and McDowell and Anderson worked together to complete scenes he had only sketched.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1082416/o-lucky-man)
## Music and the repertory cast
Alan Price, the Animals' original keyboardist, had composed music for Anderson's 1970 stage production of David Storey's *Home*. Anderson gave him the screenplay and suggested the general point of each song; Price recorded all but one before shooting began, and Anderson told Sherwin that "Alan's songs... they're the one thing that will save this film."[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1082416/o-lucky-man) Songs including "O Lucky Man," "Poor People," "Sell Sell," "Look Over Your Shoulder," "Justice," "My Home Town," and "Changes" interrupt the action as commentary, performed by Price and his band in rehearsal-room scenes that also exist inside the story world; the band even rescues Travis and drives him to London midway through.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) • [2](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole) Some episodes came from Price's touring anecdotes, including the orgy scene, which Sherwin and Anderson reworked into something with "a comically wholesome respectability."[2](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole)
Anderson also devised the multiple-role structure: "Each of our characters might have been somebody else, if his luck had been different."[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1082416/o-lucky-man) Ralph Richardson plays both a genial tailor who makes Travis's "lucky suit" and the ruthless industrialist Sir James Burgess; [Rachel Roberts](https://www.edgepedia.org/rachel-roberts-actress), Arthur Lowe, Graham Crowden, Helen Mirren, and Mona Washbourne all appear in two or three parts. Lowe's roles include the African dictator Dr. Munda, played in blackface, a choice the BFI's Stephen Dalton calls jarring to modern viewers though unremarkable in 1973.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1082416/o-lucky-man) • [2](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole) Anderson himself appears in the music sequences and the final audition scene.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN)
## Production and release
The film was shot from 20 March to mid-August 1972 in England and Scotland, with locations including London, Buckinghamshire, Kent, Yorkshire, and a Glasgow prison.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) Anderson reunited much of his *If....* crew: cinematographer Miroslav Ondříček, editor David Gladwell, and production designer Jocelyn Herbert.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1082416/o-lucky-man) The production companies were Memorial Enterprises ([Albert Finney](https://www.edgepedia.org/albert-finney) and producer Michael Medwin) and SAM Productions (Sherwin, Anderson, and McDowell), credited onscreen as Memorial Enterprises-SAM.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) Budget figures differ: [Turner Classic Movies](https://www.edgepedia.org/turner-classic-movies) reports a tight budget of $1.5 million, while the AFI Catalog quotes Anderson saying in June 1973 that the film cost under $4 million.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1082416/o-lucky-man) • [1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN)
After screening at Cannes in May 1973 and opening in London that March, the film reached New York on 13 June 1973. Warner Bros. asked Anderson to shorten it for America; he cut the Salvation Army scenes, Mrs. Richards' suicide, and the subsequent police harassment (removing the Price song "My Home Town" with them), for a reduction of nine minutes, and after New York previews he accepted the edited version.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) American reviews listed running times of 166 or 176 minutes, and later home-video versions have ranged further, from 159 minutes (1988) to 184 minutes (the 1973 cinema classification) according to the BBFC.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) • [7](https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/o-lucky-man-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc0yotu1otu)
## Reception and legacy
Critical opinion was divided from the start: *Variety* called it "a watershed film," while *The New Republic* called it "a mess of pretentiousness." Most reviewers compared Mick to Voltaire's Candide, and Price's score and McDowell's performance were widely praised.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) The film won BAFTAs for Film Music and Best Supporting Actor (Lowe) and was nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes and the Golden Globe for Best Original Score.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) It did not repeat the success of *If....*, but the BFI notes it earned generally positive reviews and a healthy cinema run.[2](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole)
The film became a cult favorite among musicians. [The Shamen](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-shamen) sampled McDowell's line "a great philosopher once wrote" in their 1992 chart-topper "Ebeneezer Goode," and The Fall's Mark E. Smith said in 2015, "If you want to know what Britain was like in 1973, watch O Lucky Man!"[2](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole) McDowell has called it his personal favorite among his films and "one of the great subversive English films."[2](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole) Anderson, McDowell, and Sherwin reunited for *Britannia Hospital* (1982), a critical and commercial failure that did not diminish the reputation of the earlier films.[2](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole) Anderson himself resisted the "trilogy" label, telling interviewers the films were not specifically connected, though he allowed they formed "a philosophical sequence."[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN) • [8](https://davidbuckingham.net/growing-up-modern/the-spirit-of-1968-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-if/the-story-continues-o-lucky-man-and-britannia-hospital/)
## References
1. [O Lucky Man! (1973), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54875-O-LUCKY-MAN)
2. [Stephen Dalton, "O Lucky Man!, revisiting Lindsay Anderson's anarchic 1970s trip down the rabbit hole," BFI, 14 May 2024](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/o-lucky-man-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-anarchic-1970s-trip-down-rabbit-hole)
3. [O Lucky Man!, Flicks (BAFTA award details)](https://www.flicks.co.uk/movie/o-lucky-man/)
4. [Sean Axmaker, "O Lucky Man!," Turner Classic Movies, 3 April 2015](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1082416/o-lucky-man)
5. [Glenn Erickson, "DVD Savant Review: O Lucky Man!," DVD Talk, 4 January 2008](https://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s2490man.html)
6. [Lindsay Anderson interview, Atlanta journal-constitution digital collection, 25 August 1973](https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/api/collection/CLATL/id/3830/download)
7. [O Lucky Man, British Board of Film Classification](https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/o-lucky-man-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc0yotu1otu)
8. [David Buckingham, "The story continues: O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital"](https://davidbuckingham.net/growing-up-modern/the-spirit-of-1968-revisiting-lindsay-andersons-if/the-story-continues-o-lucky-man-and-britannia-hospital/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of the 1970s › Released 1970 to 1976*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license