Summary
The second part of Anderson's trilogy featuring the character of Mick Travis was based on the original script by the central character Malcolm McDowell, who described his experiences as a coffee salesman. Lindsay Anderson, together with the trilogy's screenwriter David Sherwin, developed the story and prepared it for realization. In an almost musical collage of songs and individual episodes, we follow the bizarre journey of a coffee salesman as he ventures out into the world in search of fortune, encountering various corrupted figures of power in a variety of settings (a military facility, a nuclear power plant, a church, a late-night party). Malcolm McDowell is utterly irresistible here as the Happy Man, and at the very height of his acting prime. His character's life journey, full of the avarice and greed of youth, reflects the characteristic phenomena of British society at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. For the third time, Anderson encountered the precise work of cinematographer Miroslav Ondříček, while Alan Price, who had previously composed the music for some of Anderson's previous theatre productions, contributed to the excellent musical score. Finally, along with other musicians, he played himself in the film, and Lindsay Anderson similarly appears in the audition scene for The Lucky Man at the end of the film. With the exception of Malcolm McDowell, most of the cast appear in various roles several times.