In our straightened economic times, it’s easy to look back and compare the present unfavourably with the past. Now it’s all greedy financiers making a killing from imaginary products and rampant stock market speculation holding down the lot of the common worker. I’m All Right Jack is the antidote to these dreams of a non-existent economic past. The Boulting Brothers’ brand of social satire shines in this withering attack on the post-war corruption and laziness of bosses and workers alike.
Made in 1959, the film was one of a number of comedies from John and Roy Boulting painting modern British life in particularly unflattering light. I’m All Right Jack itself indirectly follows Private’s Progress, a similarly broad assault on the military which saw the first appearance of many characters who pop up again here. Now post war, they’re all turning to industry to make a fortune.
Ian Carmichael resumes his role as Stanley Windrush, an innocent aristocratic buffoon determined to become a captain of industry. Manipulated by unscrupulous relatives, he finds himself thrust into an armaments factory as a worker instead where he soon clashes with Peter Sellers’ isolated trade union shop steward Fred Kite.
The Boultings’ aren’t taking sides here. Depictions of capitalist overlords and organised labour are equally brutal. Bosses take a cavalier attitude towards staff looking for any excuse to maximise profits. The law is clearly no obstacle, Stanley’s soon in the middle of a devious plan to force a strike in one factory so business shifts to another for a higher fee. Kite and his union behave no better. They work to rule refusing to lift a finger outside clearly defined lines. When the bosses threaten to fire Stanley for incompetence, Kite argues vehemently that this is no grounds for dismissal.
It all plays out with the kind of broad brush comedy that characterised British humour in this period. There are visual gags as a cards game is revealed behind a tower of crates and Stanley indulges in a bite too many at a confectionary factory, bizarre bureaucratic conversations where characters stick rigidly to nonsense positions and a debate that ends in open farce. There’s also the usual smutty approach to nudity and sex mixing prudish nose holding with adolescent interest.
For all that it works as a general send-up of industrial relations in Britain; the real ace is Sellers’ tragi-comic performance. Where everyone else sticks with stereotype, he brings out a pitiful air in Kite, the trade unionist who genuinely believes in his cause but has been warped by it. He has no one to share it with and attempts to interest Stanley in arcane literature and convince him to stay at his house are painful to watch.
I’m All Right Jack is still a broadly effective comedy half a century later, albeit it one hampered by slightly shallow caricatures. However, in Sellers’ Kite, there’s a spark still present in this highly watchable satire.
I’m All Right Jack is released on Blu-ray on 19th January. The disc extras include a Peter Sellers’ profile and a new interview with Liz Fraser
Director: John Boulting
Stars: Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellers
Runtime: 105 mins
Country: UK
Film Rating: 
