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5.3/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 5.3/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. The Lucky Number remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you have seventy minutes to spare and want to see how weird early British talkies could get, yes, The Lucky Number is absolutely worth a watch. Fans of chaotic silent-era energy will love this, but if you cannot stand scratchy 1930s audio and people shouting in thick London accents, you will probably hate it.
The plot is so simple it feels like an excuse for a chase. A famous football player wins the lottery, gets his pocket picked, and then has to hunt down the ticket through a series of increasingly loud locations.
Honestly, the football match at the start is barely about football. It is mostly just people falling over and some very obvious back-projection.
But once the ticket goes missing, the movie turns into a weirdly modern-feeling fever dream. Anthony Asquith, the director, was clearly bored with just pointing the camera at people talking.
He uses these bizarre quick cuts and dizzying camera angles that feel way ahead of 1932. 😲
There is this one scene in a crowded pub that goes on forever. Everyone is talking over each other, and the sound is just a big soup of noise.
You can barely understand what anyone is saying, but it somehow works. It feels like a real, sweaty pub where everyone is slightly drunk.
Gordon Harker shows up as a pub owner, and he has this amazing sour face. He looks like he just sucked on a lemon the entire time he is on screen.
I kept thinking about how different this is from American comedies of the same year, like maybe A Woman of the World which has a completely different, quieter rhythm.
This movie does not do quiet. It is just constant, relentless movement.
It has that same loose, chaotic energy you get in something like The Unholy Garden, where the plot is just a clothesline to hang weird bits on.
At one point, there is a musical number in a toy shop that feels like it belongs in a completely different film. It is incredibly charming but also makes no sense at all.
The main guy, Clifford Mollison, has this very rubbery face. He is not particularly handsome, but you cannot stop watching him bounce around the screen.
He reminds me of the lead in Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, just constantly in motion, running from his own bad luck.
Sometimes the editing is so fast it actually hurts your eyes a bit. The film print I watched was pretty rough, which probably did not help.
Also, the romantic subplot with the girl (Joan Wyndham) is totally flat. They have zero chemistry, and you can tell the movie only includes her because they needed a girl on the poster.
But who cares about romance when you have a scene where a dog steals the ticket? Yes, that actually happens.
It is silly, loud, and ends so abruptly you might think the tape cut out. But I kind of loved how messy it was.
Go watch it if you want something fast and a bit chaotic. Just turn the volume down a bit so your ears do not bleed.
IMDb 6.9
1921
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