O Lucky Man! is a 1973 British comedy-drama fantasy film, intended as an allegory on life in a capitalist society. Directed by Lindsay Anderson, it stars Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis, whom McDowell had first played as a disaffected public schoolboy in his first film performance in Anderson's film if. . The film was entered into the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. The movie opens with a short fragment outside the plot but clearly related on repeated viewings. Grainy, black-and-white, and silent, a title "Once Upon a Time" leads to Latino laborers picking coffee beans while armed foremen push... rudely between them. One worker pockets a few beans but is seen by a foreman. He is next seen before a fat Caucasian magistrate who loses some saliva as he removes his cigar only to say "Guilty." The foreman pulls his machete and lays it across the unfortunate laborer's wrists, bound to a wooden block, revealing that he is to lose his hands for the theft of a few beans. The machete lifts, descends, and we see McDowell draw back in a silent scream.
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