AllMovie

Zany British comedian Tony Hancock was briefly a major draw in the 1960s, with several popular TV series, sellout personal appearances, and a string of theatrical films to his credit. In The Rebel (released in the US as Call Me Genius), Hancock plays a middle-class businessman who decides to chuck it all and become a painter. He heads for Paris, there to starve in an attic until fame and fortune comes calling. Like many British comedies of the era, The Rebel has great fun at expense of modern art and bohemian artistes; Hancock takes full advantage of every humorous possibility, with suave George Sanders acting as his dignified foil. Alas, by the end of the 1960s, Tony Hancock was dead by his own hand, a victim of alcohol and acute depression.