The Magic Christian

Guy Grand and his newly adopted heir bribe a Shakespearean actor to strip during a live performance of Hamlet. The audacious moment tests social boundaries and exposes how people react when money is involved. It establishes the film's central joke that everyone has their price, given enough incentive.

Grand persuades a traffic warden to cancel a parking ticket and even devour the ticket's plastic covering. The warden eagerly complies, savoring the bribe and the absurdity of the request. The scene underscores the film's satirical attack on bribery as social currency.

At Sotheby's, Grand learns a Rembrandt School portrait might fetch around £10,000, but he makes a pre-auction bid of £30,000 to secure it. After the purchase, he cuts the nose from the canvas with scissors, shocking the bewildered director Mr. Dugdale. The act demonstrates his view that value is arbitrary and purchasable.

In an elegant restaurant, Grand stages a loud display of gluttony, becoming the institution's most conspicuous patron. He orders extravagant dishes and dominates the scene with an ostentatious appetite. The moment satirizes excess as a form of performance and control.

During the annual Oxford rowing race, Grand bribes the Oxford coach to have their boat ram the Cambridge shell. Cambridge's crew is unfairly defeated, and the spectators react with a mix of disbelief and amusement. The prank illustrates his belief that sport and society can be steered by money.

In a traditional pheasant hunt, Grand uses an anti-aircraft gun to down a bird, turning a rural ritual into a spectacle of power. The gun's whistle cuts through the hunt, leaving the participants both horrified and amused. The episode broadens the scope of his social experiments.

Guy and Youngman purchase tickets for the luxury liner The Magic Christian and join the ship's richest passengers. They present themselves as observers of high society, ready to test its values. The voyage is cast as a controlled stage for their moral theater.

On board, a solitary drinker is approached by a flamboyant cabaret singer who may be a transvestite, provoking uneasy reactions. A vampire poses as a waiter, adding to the surreal disruption of normal service. The ship's atmosphere turns into a carnival of outrageous social provocations.

A cinema sequence aboard the ship shows the unsuccessful transplant of a black person's head onto a white body, provoking distress and disbelief among the guests. The sensational scene is another extreme test of social boundaries under pay. It reinforces the film's critique of commodification and racial boundaries.

The ship's captain appears in a drunken stupor and is carted off by a gorilla, amplifying the sense that everything aboard is unraveling. Panic spreads as guests realize something is terribly wrong with their voyage. The moment escalates the satire toward its climax.

A crowd is directed to the machine room where the Priestess of the Whip, aided by topless drummers, conducts a ritual with hundreds of slave girls chained to the ceiling. The scene is visually shocking and deliberately dehumanizing. It crystallizes the film's critique of spectacle and power.

Passengers break out into daylight only to discover the ship is actually a structure inside a warehouse and that they have never left London. A large painted sign reading 'SMASH CAPITALISM' appears on the interior wall as the crowd stumbles to freedom. The reveal reframes the voyage as a meticulously staged social experiment.

Grand fills a huge vat with urine, blood, and animal excrement and saturates it with thousands of banknotes. He entices crowds of workers by shouting 'Free money!' and they dive in to recover the cash. The chaotic scene culminates in a riotous display of greed and release.

Back in the park where the story began, Grand and Youngman bribe the park warden to let them sleep there, suggesting this simple act is a more direct method to achieve their ends. They remain calm and collected, mirroring the earlier coolness of their social experiments. The film closes on their unwavering, amused expressions.