JACK I'M ALL RIGHT Movie Review

During the 1950s, Peter Sellers appeared in a number of modestly budgeted British comedies of varying quality and staying power. The one constant in all of the films was Sellers, who didn't simply seem to be a different character each time, he seemed to be a different actor. In John and Roy Boulting's gloriously funny 1959 I'm All Right, Jack, Sellers plays the Hitler-mustached factory union leader Mr. Kite, whose self-serving blather about his union “brothers” fails to conceal the bullying, greedy little tyrant lurking underneath his brush cut. Management comes off no better, of course, and the final moments of the movie—in which both labor and management appear on a TV show to discuss their differences and end up trampling each other to snatch up a pile of loose pound notes—perfectly sums up the movie's utterly refreshing cynicism. Sellers is miraculous in this movie—he's always able to show us Kite's thoughts as if they were written on his forehead, yet never for a second gives up his comic timing to do it. It's a smart, bitter, hilarious little classic. With Terry-Thomas, Ian Carmichael, Richard Attenborough, and Margaret Rutherford. Based on Alan Hackney's novel Private Life. (Film editor Anthony Harvey went on to fame as a director, with credits including The Lion in Winter.)

NEXT STOP … The Ladykillers, The Wrong Arm of the Law, Lolita

1959 101m/B Peter Sellers, Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas, Victor Maddern; D: John Boulting. British Academy Awards ‘59: Best Actor (Sellers), Best Screenplay. VHS FCT