Leo the Last 1970

Prince Leo, the ennui-afflicted heir to a deposed European throne, returns to his father’s house in West London only to discover that the neighbourhood has become a slum. An ornithologist ill at ease with others, he trains his spy-glass on the world around him, his gaze shifting from birds to the neighbours he observes. At first strictly an observer, he grows increasingly agitated as violence, poverty, and injustice blight the lives of those around him. He is moved by the plight of Salambo Mardi and her family, beset by the rapist shopkeeper Kowalski and the pimp Jasper. Gradually he is stirred from his emotional detachment to try to assist her, a development that confuses, alarms, and angers his parasitic entourage: Margaret, his social climber fiancée; Max, the shady family lawyer (who, for reasons never directly explained, is desperate for Leo to marry Margaret); David, his quack doctor; and Laszlo, the household manager and apparent leader of a secret society aiming to restore the dynasty. Leo’s sudden vitality also threatens Jasper, who is in league with Laszlo.

A pacifist and liberal idealist with no interest in reigning, Leo is relieved when Laszlo confesses that the society is a fraud, but furious when he discovers that he himself is the owner of the slum and that his life of wealth and privilege has been paid for from rents extracted from its residents.

Leo becomes the unlikeliest of revolutionaries, rallying the denizens of the slum with the aid of Salambo and her charismatic working-class hero boyfriend Roscoe. The intellectual and professional class—the socialite, the doctor, and the lawyer—are quickly overcome, but the capitalists and petite bourgeoisie—pimp, rent collector, shopkeeper, and real estate shareholders—prove tougher, fortifying themselves in Leo’s mansion.

In the final cataclysm, Leo leads the mob in burning his own mansion to the ground, its occupiers surrendering and fleeing at the last moment. In the last line of dialogue, Roscoe tells Leo: “Well, you didn’t change the world, did you?” Leo replies: “No, but we changed our street”. The victors laugh together and disperse. Leo wanders up to his old home and picks from the rubble one of his old spy-glasses. Smiling happily, he chucks it aside and skips merrily away.