The Magic Christian (1969)

User Rating:

5.9/10   

Director:

Joseph McGrath

Writers:

Terry Southern (novel)
Terry Southern (writer) ...

Release Date:

12 December 1969 (UK)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

The Magic Christian is: antiestablishmentarian, antibellum, antitrust, antiseptic, antibiotic, antisocial & antipasto.

Plot:

A series of strange sequences connected with a satire on greed.

Plot Keywords:

Art Gallery | Satire | Galley | Gorilla | Dominatrix

Cast

Peter Sellers	...	Sir Guy Grand KG, KC, CBE
Ringo Starr	...	Youngman Grand, Esq.
Isabel Jeans	...	Dame Agnes Grand
Caroline Blakiston	...	Hon. Esther Grand
Wilfrid Hyde-White	...	Capt. Reginald K. Klaus
Richard Attenborough	...	Oxford coach
Leonard Frey	...	Laurence Faggot
Laurence Harvey	...	Hamlet
Christopher Lee	...	Ship's vampire
Spike Milligan	...	Traffic warden #27
Roman Polanski	...	Solitary drinker
Raquel Welch	...	Priestess of the Whip
Tom Boyle	...	My Man Jeff
Victor Maddern	...	Hot dog vendor
Terence Alexander	...	Mad Major

Runtime:

92 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:15 (video rating) | UK:A (original rating) | Iceland:L | USA:M (original rating) | USA:PG

Filming Locations:

Barnes, London, England, UK

Company:

Commonwealth United Entertainment

Trivia:

After watching rushes from the first day of filming, Peter Sellers leaped to his feet and said "Thank God we caught it in time!" He felt his performance was so bad that the film should be canceled. He was eventually persuaded to continue.

Quotes:

Youngman Grand, Esq.: You're certainly puttin' everybody on today, Dad.
Sir Guy Grand KG, KC, CBE: Well, you know, Youngman, sometimes it's not enough merely to teach. One has to punish as well. A little bit of the old pause.
Youngman Grand, Esq.: Cause for pause?
Sir Guy Grand KG, KC, CBE: Yes.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Unknown Peter Sellers (2000) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Come and Get It

Funny, But Unsettling

One day the fabulously wealthy Sir Guy Grand who is Peter Sellers with a much larger nose finds a young orphan kid in a park. On the spur of the moment he adopts young Ringo Starr, probably because Ringo has a well known honker in real life and Sellers sees something of himself in Ringo.

The idea is that Sellers has to have someone not just to leave his money to, but someone to impart his accumulated wisdom of the years which is boiled up into one single thought; that EVERYBODY has his price.

The rest of the film is a Monty Pythonesque group of skits in which Sellers tries to prove just that to Starr. They range from Laurence Harvey doing a striptease while doing Hamlet's soliloquy to a beat cop eating a parking ticket for 500 pounds. The title The Magic Christian refers to a Titanic like cruise ship that only caters to the upper crust. Sellers and Starr integrate that ship's maiden voyage in a most interesting fashion.

That the film is like Monty Python is no accident with Graham Chapman and John Cleese doing the writing. Ringo's former Beatle companero, Paul McCartney wrote The Magic Christian theme, Come and Get It which sums up the philosophy of the film.

After almost 40 years, The Magic Christian is acidly funny, but a still unsettling.