I'm All Right Jack

For me, this is the best film of all time. A superb cast of the UK's finest character actors and an A1 script.

Peter Sellers was truly magnificent as the left wing union shop steward and Terry Thomas excelled in playing the two faced Personnel Manager. Among his classic comments are "The Management have behaved like absolute stinkers" when talking to the union and " They are a complete shower" when talking to Management about the unions. Another fine comment is when on being told that some bigwigs are visiting the factory, Terry Thomas replies "You better spruce the place up a bit, you know soap in the toilets, that sort of thing".

I must have seen this film at least 20 times and I never grow tired of it. Great story, fine comedy and great acting. Never has a film handled the issue of industrial relations in such an amusing and pertinent manner.

I'm All Right Jack is directed and produced by John and Roy Boulting from a script by Frank Harvey, John Boulting and Alan Hackney. It's based on the novel Private Life by Hackney and is a sequel to the Boulting's 1956 film Private's Progress. Returning from the first film are Ian Carmichael, Dennis Price, Richard Attenborough, Terry-Thomas, Victor Madden & Miles Malleson. While Peter Sellers (BAFTA for Best Actor) and a ream of British comedy actors of the time make up the rest of the cast.

Looking to force a crooked deal, Bertram Tracepurcel (Price) and his cohort Sydney de Vere Cox (Attenborough) convince Major Hitchcock (Thomas), the personnel manager at the local missile factory, to hire Tracepurcel's nephew, Stanley Windrush (Carmichael), knowing full well that his earnest and wet behind the ears approach to work will cause fractions within the work force. Then it's expected that Bolshoi shop steward Fred Kite (Sellers) will call a strike that will see the crooked plan to fruition.

Between 1956 and 1963 the Boulting brothers produced a number of satirical movies, I'm All Right Jack is arguably the finest of the bunch. Given that it's now admittedly a dated time capsule, for some of the dialogue would simply be shot down in this day and age, one has to judge and value it for the time it was made. The first and most striking thing about the film is that nobody escapes the firing line, this is not merely a device to kick the trade unions with {and a kicking they do get}, but also the government, the media, big industries and the good old chestnut of the old school brigade. All are in the sights of the Boulting's and the team. The overriding message being that all of them are out for themselves, self-interest and feathering of ones nest is the order of the times.

Also winning a BAFTA was the screenplay, with that you still need the cast to do do it justice. Ian Carmichael was an undervalued performer in that he was an unselfish actor feeding set ups to his costars. That is never more evident than it is here where the likes of Margaret Rutherford, Irene Handl, John Le Mesurier, Liz Fraser & Victor Madden benefit greatly playing off of Carmichael's toff twit twittering. But it's Sellers movie all the way. Which considering he didn't want to do the movie originally, saying he couldn't see the role of Kite being funny, makes his turn all the more special. Studying for weeks labour leaders and politico types, Sellers, with suit too tight, cropped hair and a Hitler moustache, nails the pompous militancy of the shop steward leader. It doesn't stop there, couple it with the contrast of Kite's home life, where the Boulting's are slyly digging away at facades, and you get a two side of the coin performance that's a joy from start to finish.

Very much like Ealing's sharp 51 piece, The Man In The White Suit, this is cynical, but classy, British cinema across the board. Throwing punches and with cheek unbound, I'm All Right Jack has razor sharp teeth from which to take a bite of the comedy pie with. 9/10

The cast alone is a triumph in this movie - some of the best British character actors who ever lived are here: Terry Thomas, Miles Malleson, John Le Mesurier, all backing up Ian Carmichael as the earnest, silly-ass upper-class bumbler and Peter Sellers as Fred Kite, the Marxist shop steward. Sellers in particular is wonderful; his Fred Kite is a lower class striver who has acquired just enough education to give him an inflated idea of his own abilities, but not enough to realize the gaps and inadequacies in his views. He is a perfect realization in miniature of Taine's statement that there is nothing more dangerous than a general idea in a narrow, empty mind. He boasts to his Oxford-educated gentleman lodger about the summer course he took at the university once, reminding him in a familiar fashion about the very good marmalade and toast provided by the college, while the obviously wealthy young man politely admits that he wasn't acquainted with the public dining hall during his years there.

The plot becomes more and more complex as the movie progresses, with almost everyone turning out to be on the take. The climax comes in a free-for-all over a bag containing thousands of pounds intended to bribe Stanley into joining the sensible schemers plundering the public while paying lip service to public service and solidarity with the working class. Malcolm Muggeridge has a interesting cameo in this scene, playing himself. Most recent broadcasts of this movie have edited out the disturbing racist statements of the working class characters, but the original movie had no sentimental soft spot for anyone, workers or bosses.

If it hadn't been for the fact that a similar (though less cynical) film had been made just a few years earlier (THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT), I might have scored this parody a bit higher. Despite obviously being a comedy, the film is an amazingly insightful attack on the floundering state of British labor following the Second World War. While Britain used to be the most productive country on the planet, during this era they were torn apart by strikes and work slowdowns. Yet the film doesn't just attack labor unions with their unreasonable demands and poor work ethic. It also attacks factory owners who actually exploit this to their own interests. This film is obviously a loud declaration that the British Empire is in fact dead.

The film begins with an upper class twit named 'Windrush' going to work for the first time. However, he really isn't cut out for management despite his Oxford education--and he seems better suited to manual labor. The problem is that after failing again and again in management, he is simply too good as a blue collar worker. This is because he works way too hard and makes all his extremely lazy co-workers look bad! And, when management documents how much work one motivated man CAN do, this ultimately results in a strike, as management wants the workers output to increase--or at least that's what they claimed. All this set in motion by a slow-witted but very decent upper class gent working as a forklift driver!!

The film is very well written and clever. While younger audience members might not appreciate the film's insights, it is funny in a droll sort of way. Additionally, having wonderful actors such as Peter Sellers and Terry-Thomas sure didn't hurt! Overall, sharp social and political satire that does a great job of attacking labor and management and giving insights into the decline of the British economy.

Along with Alexander Mackendrick's "The Man in the White Suit," this is THE great satire of management-labor relations: less allegorical and more cheerfully crass. In a way this movie seems like a sort of crossroads in British comedy, poised between the warmer eccentricities of the Ealing films and and the screw-'em-all pop irreverence of the rising New Wave.

These days the film seems to be primarily remembered for Peter Sellers' magnificent caricature of socialist sanctimony, Fred Kite, but the whole gallery of players, many reprising roles from the earlier "Private's Progress," is excellent. Carmichael, all inane, wild-eyed grins, is Woosterish as ever as the brainless but well-intentioned Windrush. Terry-Thomas produces a very funny sketch of middle-class middle management. It's a perfect picture of lazy hypocrisy: the man who settles into a do-nothing job, knowing exactly how awful it is but not caring so long as he gets through the day. He had a face made for contempt; watching his mustache curl as he reads an entry in the workers' suggestion box ("Filthy beast," he mutters, as he tucks it away in a pocket) or as he picks his way through the rubbish of Kite's wifeless home is a joy. Price and Attenborough are, as always, first-class rotters, the iciest of the moneyed class, and Handl, Le Mesurier and Rutherford add vividly funny moments. As the war over Windrush expands from workplace to societal to domestic spheres, watching the various characters bounce and interact provides some of the movie's best-observed moments, such as the brief tea scene between Rutherford and Handl, who, though inhabiting utterly different worlds, seem to interact perfectly in mutual obliviousness.

And there is Sellers, of course, pitch-perfect whether marching around the factory like the lead float in a parade or rhapsodizing about Russia or going hilariously blank on live television. It's memorable work that might overbalance the movie's double-edged attack if it weren't human enough to be sympathetic as well.

All in all, silly, clever, raucous fun.