The Rebel
- 1961 film
Comedy starring Tony Hancock as a bored London office clerk who begins to make waves on the Parisian art scene. Also features George Sanders, Paul Massie, Margit Saad, Gregoire Aslan, Dennis Price and more.
Press clippings
"Unfailing ability to cheer me up": why The Rebel is my feelgood movie
There is something rather wonderful about seeing Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock in full and living colour, operating at the height of his powers, the man who his writers described as "the best comic actor in the business".
Andrew Pulver, The Guardian, 7th April 2025Top 10 Network Comedy Releases of the 2010s
A look back at Network Distributing's best ten comedy DVD and Blu-ray titles released in the last decade.
Aaron Brown, Network, 6th December 2019Paul Merton on Hancock's Hollywood half-hour
Tony Hancock's two leading film roles are a reminder of the extremes of his comic genius. Paul Merton talks about the legacy of his hero - and how comedy is too coarse today.
Catherine Shoard, The Guardian, 20th September 2019Newly restored Tony Hancock films and special cinema screening
Tony Hancock's celebrated early-1960s feature films have been restored for new Blu-ray releases, with a cinema screening planned for the acclaimed comedy classic The Rebel.
British Comedy Guide, 2nd September 2019Not so the British B-movie. Studios making big-screen comedies in the Seventies merrily filched ideas from the big Bakelite box in the corner. Few British comedy stars escaped the pull of the Odeon and with every adaptation came an unusual twist.
Tony Hancock became a The Rebel. Morecambe and Wise got mixed up in Soviet spy rings and banana republics. Alf Garnett took LSD. Less controversially, the cast of stars of Are You Being Served? went on holiday to Spain. Many of these films are regarded, quite rightly, as inferior to the programmes which spawned them.
Some of them are still pretty good, though. Porridge: the Movie does the original proud, while the film of Man About the House goes slightly mad towards the end, taking the cast to the Thames Television studios for strange encounters with Spike Milligan and, confusingly, the real life stars of fellow sitcom Love Thy Neighbour.
Phil Norman, The Daily Express, 28th May 2007It is possible for instance, to analyse Thames's two-hour-long old film "The Rebel." But I find the attempt rather like trying to fillet a fishfinger.
Nancy Banks-Smith, The Guardian, 4th February 1970