Leo the Last is a 1970 film directed by John Boorman, based on the play The Prince by George Tabori, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Billie Whitelaw.
Plot
The ennui afflicted heir to a deposed European throne returns to his father’s house in West London to find that the neighborhood has become a slum. An ornithologist ill at ease with others, he finds his spy-glass wandering from birds to observe his neighbors. Strictly an observer at first, he increasingly becomes agitated as their lives are blighted by violence, poverty, and injustice. In particular he is moved by the plight of the pubescent Salambo Mardi and her family, beset by the rapist shop-keep Kowalski and the pimp Roscoe.
Gradually he is stirred from his emotional detachment to try to assist her, a development that confuses, alarms, and angers his parasitic entourage; Margaret, his social climbing fiancé, Max, the shady family lawyer (who for reasons never directly explained is desperate for Leo to marry Margaret), David, his quack doctor, and Lazlo, the household manager and apparent leader of a secret society aiming to restore the dynasty. (Leo’s sudden vitality also threatens Roscoe the pimp who is, in fact, in league with Lazlo.)
A pacifist and liberal idealist with no interest in reigning, Leo is relieved when Lazlo confesses that the society is a fraud but furious when he discovers that he is the owner of the slum and his life of wealth and privilege has been paid for from its rents.
The movie turns Marxist parable as Leo becomes the unlikeliest of revolutionaries, rallying the denizens of the slum with the aid of Salumbo and her charismatic working-class hero boyfriend Roscoe. (A different character from the pimp of the same name.) The intellectual and professional class (in the person of the socialite, the doctor, and the lawyer) is quickly overcome, but the capitalists and petit bourgeoisie (pimp, rent collector, shop keep, and real estate shareholders) prove tougher, fortifying themselves in Leo’s mansion.
In the final cataclysm, Leo leads the mob in burning his own mansion to the ground, its occupiers surrendering and fleeing at the last moment. In the last line of dialogue, Roscoe (the people’s hero, not the pimp) tells Leo: “Well, you didn’t change the world, did you?” Leo replies: “No, but we changed our street.” They victors laugh together and disperse. Leo wanders up to his old home and picks from the rubble one of his spy-glasses. Smiling happily he chucks it aside and skips merrily away.
Cast
Commentary
Boorman won the award for Best Director at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival for the film,[1] however the film has not yet been made available on DVD in the UK.
The film's exteriors were shot in a street due to be demolished near Ladbroke Grove tube station in West London. Raymond Durgnat rate it in his all-time top ten films.[citation needed]
References
- 'John Boorman' (Faber 1985) by Michel Ciment
- 'A Critical History of British Cinema' (Secker and Warburg 1978) by Roy Armes
External links
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Films directed by John Boorman |
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