Starring:
IAN CARMICHAEL,
PETER SELLERS
With RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH,
IRENE HANDL,
JOHN LE MESURIER,
DENNIS PRICE,
MARGARET RUTHERFORD,
TERRY THOMAS
Directed by: JOHN BOULTING
Produced by: ROY BOULTING
Honoured by the British Film Academy with the awards of Best British Screenplay and Best Performance by a British Actor (Peter Sellers) of 1959, I'm All Right Jack has more than stood the test of time as a topical and hilariously witty comment on the stupidities and hypocrisies of the class war.
When it opened, it infuriated many leading figures on both sides of the union fence. Twenty years later the film was still felt to be so hard-hitting that the BBC decided against showing it on television just before the Parliamentary Election of 1979. I'm All Right Jack remains as up-to-date as every headline which blames autocratic' managements or 'money grabbing' unions for everything from inflation to weather. Like all the best British humour, this comedy's roots go deep into the rich soil of the realities and eccentricities of our lives. All the characters are recognisable types.
Laughing at their behaviour we
laugh not only at the people we meet
every day but also at ourselves;
though most of us cannot help but
identify with the hapless cause of all
the trouble, the upperclass twit
Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael),
who eventually proves to have more
down-to-earth commonsense than all
the bowler-hatted and cloth-capped
clever Dicks who use him as a pawn
in their money-making games.
This is the film that launched
Peter Sellers on the road to
international stardom. Before he
created the tragi-comic shop steward
Fred Kite, with his mangled
sentences, pinched mouth, arrogant
strut and pathetic loneliness, Sellers
was known as a Goon and laughter-making clown. Kite established him
as a top-line character actor worthy
of stardom opposite Sophia Loren
in The Millionairess and led to his
transformation into a sexy leading
man. But Kite lives on as one of
Seller's finest performances ever;
and as an awful warning to every
public speaker.
MARJORIE BILBOW
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Distributed by: EMI |
This page was last updated 02 Dec 2002