Movie Review – The Rebel

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Spoiler alerts – 1961 Troubled radio and TV comedian Tony Hancock only made a few movies, of which this was the best. It takes a strong poke at pretentious art and philosophy schools in Europe. Hancock plays himself as an office worker who quits accountancy to take up art professionally even though his work is talentless and immature. He ends up unwittingly creating a whole movement called Infantilism. He ends up mistaken for another artist who has quit to be more like him, while unintentionally stealing credit for the other artist’s genuinely worthy work. Great scenes include the party with the highly conceited Gothic Existentialists, and Hancock’s repeatedly doomed efforts to sculpt his own vision of Aphrodite. There are cameos by a barely recognizable young Oliver Reed and Nanette Newman. An amusing movie with a serious message and rather nice that Hancock’s character never gives up his passion for art though obvious that he has no future in the art world. Arthur Chappell