Original subtitles

We haven't had a stoppings like this for ages,

not since the week before last.

I'm terribly sorry about it. You don't want to be sorry, squire.

It makes a nice little break, doesn't it?

(HORN BLARES)

(AGITATED CHATTER)

What's up now? Dinner time. Come on, cock.

Blimey, all go today, innit?

Released in 1959,

I'm All Right Jack went to the top of the British Box Office.

A film that spoke to its times

and gazed suspiciously into the future.

Beneath the laughter lies a provocative study of politics,

class, aspiration, greed, and division.

A vision that, chillingly, still holds true over 60 years later.

There is a lot of British comedy in that era which is very funny,

but it's very parochial, you know,

it will usually be about jewel robbery

or sort of some people in prison,

or robbing a bank or something.

Whereas I'm All Right Jack, right from the first frame,

it is very much setting itself out as being

a state of the nation film.

It's a very ambitious film,

it's making a big, bold statement

about British society since the war.

Hey you, you! What do you think you're doing?

I'm frightfully sorry,

I'm afraid I haven't quite got this thing buttoned up yet.

What's your name? Windrush.

The permanently bewildered Ian Carmichael

makes for a splendid patsy as Stanley Windrush,

the post twit who is landed on the factory floor,

a pawn both for the self-important union

and the scheming bosses.

But the movie belongs to Sellers.

What makes Kite so memorable,

is that he rises above caricature.

He is an idealist, even a romantic,

trapped in his dreams of class equality and a truculent,

very British, devotion to the rules.

(TRIUMPHANT MUSIC)

(TRIUMPHANT MUSIC CONTINUES)

MAN: 'Look hard,

for this is the last we shall see of Sir John,

a Justice of the Peace,

Chairman of the Rotten Unionist Association,

Vice-president of his local British Legion,

Honorary Chairman of the Regional Board

for the Adjustment of Distressed Gentlewomen,

and Sleeping Partner in that vast financial complex,

the City and Threadneedle Trust.

Yes, there goes Sir John,

a solid block in the edifice of what seemed to be

an ordered and stable society.

There he goes, on his way out.

(CHEERING)

For with victory came a new age,

and with that new age, a new spirit.'

(LAUGHS)

# I'm all right, Jack

# I'm OK

# That is the message for today #

The film is filled with British greats.

Not only Sellers and Carmichael,

but Terry-Thomas, Dennis Price,

Richard Attenborough, Irene Handl,

and Margaret Rutherford.

It was directed by the versatile John Boulting,

and produced by his twin Roy,

the brothers behind Brighton Rock.

I'm All Right Jack is a social satire

where, possibly for the first time in British cinema,

the filmmakers were looking

to really go into detail about the trade union movement

and its relationship with management.

This hadn't really been done before.

There had been a number of films about, for instance, class conflict

between the ranks in the army and the upper classes in the army,

or there's been street-based sequences with class,

but the idea of moving it into the workplace

and examining workplace tensions, was actually revolutionary.

It was also accurate.

The people who made this film wanted to create a realistic comedy

with over-the-top satirical characters.

This beginning of the challenging and understanding

the interpretation of British institutions.

It's a revolutionary piece of work in many ways,

and it... it changed the way that comedy was made.

A lot of the archetypes we see in this film go on to become

strong archetypes in British comedy

throughout the 60s, 70s, and onwards.

So they wanted to draw out what was happening,

but also make a much broader statement

about the structure of the society. It's a commentary as much as a joke.

Mr Hill, are you any nearer a settlement with the employers

today than you were yesterday?

No. The fight is on.

There's no prospect as we see it of a settlement being reached,

and this great assembly here today

proves conclusively that the spirit of the workers

is solid and determined to win at this great struggle.

Do you think... (APPLAUSE)

It's really, at heart, it's a class comedy.

It's about the management and the workers,

with Windrush's aunt as, even above that, the sort of upper class.

And it's very heavily built around the sort of stock characters,

the sort of devious boss,

the union leader, who constantly uses slightly too long words

that he doesn't quite know what they mean.

They're all from a gallery of British characters.

You can imagine them all in cartoons, newspaper cartoons,

and you'd recognise them instantly,

the boss with the moustache,

the slightly dodgy ex-military type.

The workers constantly having tea breaks.

They're all... they all feel like a familiar...

gallery of British life.

That's all right for the brass at head office,

they don't actually have to deal with the workers.

But the personnel officer, that's my job, God help me.

And I can tell you they're an absolute shower.

A positive shower.But my instructions, Major Hitchcock,

are to carry out a time and motion study in every department.

Whose bright idea was that?

There is absolutely no question that the Boulting brothers

took the baton of Michael Balcon's Ealing Studios comedies,

and ran with it into the next era.

The Ealing comedies, of course, characterised by wonderfully cosy

armchair anarchy, but an anarchy it was, you know,

anti-establishment, comedies that of course stood the test of time.

The Boultings took that anarchy and just made it more jaundiced.

They had a more jaundiced view of society

by the time that they got around to making their great comedies.

One of the reasons is that their own experiences in filmmaking

up to that point, was that they had come across

all kinds of difficulties

involving unions, communist infiltration,

management problems, all sorts of things like that,

which actually had turned them slightly politically.

And so they had a pretty sort of bitter view

of the industry, as well as British society.

And they were objective enough to be able to sort of see it,

but clever enough to know that,

if they wanted to get these messages across,

they had to be entertaining.

So they made a series of comedies

which basically targeted the sort of great institutions of Britain,

the law, the Foreign Office,

but greatest of all,

industry and the unions.

And that's why, I think, by the time they got around to making

I'm All Right Jack, they were in the absolute prime

of their sort of satirical ideas and how to express them.

Is he in? Ah, good morning, Mr Kite.

Well, he's very busy, but I know he is always pleased to see you.

Will you come this way?

The Works Committee to see you, major.

Ah, come in. Take a pew. Cigarette?

After due deliberation, Major Hitchcock, the Works Committee

has had to call a stoppage in response to our members' wishes.

Oh really? Well, what precisely is the trouble?

The reference they made, I'm all right Jack,

was a piece of military slang, and it is supposed to have begun

in the Second World War as a sort of a naval term

for when you're abandoning your ship

and you pull the ladder up after you,

shouting to the men below, "Sod you, I'm all right Jack."

It was this idea of, at a moment of crisis,

the person who decides that they're for themselves

and they're not for the collective.

What the filmmakers wanted to show is the attitude of looking out

for number one, looking after only yourself

is permeating British society.

And so everybody in this film, with the exception of one person,

is making sure that they're all right.

There are numerous candidates for Peter Sellers' finest performance.

The great actor comedian was a chameleon,

disappearing inside the skin of his characters.

But the answer is simple.

Fred Kite, shop steward of Missiles Limited,

the factory at the heart of I'm All Right Jack,

not only a razor sharp political satire,

but an indelible slice of post-war British life.

My colleagues here have instructed me to put to you one question,

Major. Certain, go ahead, my dear fellow.

Is it, or is it not your intention to sack this man?

Sack him? Of course.

I'm obliged to point out, Major, that if you sack this man,

the company is in breach of its agreement with the union.

But surely he's not a union member.

Correct, but that is merely technical.

But didn't you say that he was incompetent

and couldn't do his job properly?

We do not and cannot accept the principle that incompetence

justifies dismissal. That is victimisation.That's right.Yeah.

I'm All Right Jack was born out of a rich comedy heritage.

The Ealing tradition was drawing to a close in 1959,

but it had bequeathed the concept of social enquiry

into a new generation of films.

Based on the novel Private Life by Alan Hackney,

this is technically a sequel to Private's Progress,

made by John Boulting in 1956.

In that wartime satire, Ian Carmichael's lolly-gagging

Windrush, proves himself to be less than officer material.

One of the things that is interesting about it, is that,

officially, it was a sequel to a film called Private's Progress,

and it shares a lot of the same characters,

but the thing about Private's Progress, was that

it was looking back to the war, set in the war,

whereas I'm All Right Jack, in a way,

is looking forward to the next 20 years of British life,

because that way of being,

in constant strikes, industrial relations and the unions arguing,

that went on for another 20 years.

That went on right up until 1979 when Margaret Thatcher was elected,

specifically to put a stop to the kind of world of I'm All Right Jack.

So, weirdly, it's...

almost a look ahead to the future,

as well as being a look at Britain now, ie in 1959.

We're now inside what they call the assembly line.

In the normal way we wouldn't be able to shoot here

because of the terrific noise of machinery,

which, as you can see, is now stopped and dead.

Now this is Colonel Buckmaster, who is the Public Relations Officer.

Colonel Buckmaster, can you tell me

how long the lines have been stopped?Yes, since last night.

Will it be, sir, before the stoppage extends to the rest of the plant?

I'm afraid that will be tomorrow.

How many men will that lay off? Approximately 15,000.

How official is this strike on the part of the Brigs Farveys men?

It's completely unofficial, the first the management heard of it

was at lunchtime yesterday, when men went out to lunch

and didn't come back again, which caused, of course,

the slowdown and eventually the stoppage of the whole plant

because there was no work for the others to do.

I'm All Right Jack picks up with a demobbed Ian Carmichael's attempts

to join the upswing of post-war Britain in the 50s.

Skewering both political and working life,

the sequel follows rival arms factories

scheming to raise the profit margin

on a deal to sell missiles to the Middle East.

A plan that will involve fermenting a strike

around the issue of time management.

Well, Mr Mohammed, I'm afraid there's a distinct possibility

that Missiles will be unable to fulfil your contract.

But you are joking.

The peace of the Middle East depends on it.

No, my dear fellow, I'm not joking.

Cox, perhaps you can explain to Mr Mohammed.

Well, there's an engineering concern that I happen to own.

I own the shares and Bertie owns the tax losses,

only not in his name, of course.

The Britain that I'm All Right Jack depicts,

is one that is... has emerged, in a sense,

from the darkest shadow of the war,

and indeed people, whilst they have...

All the people in this film will... The characters in this film

will have served in the war, they don't discuss it.

It's something that happened in the past,

much as the country had left that behind.

The country is battling with a number of different things.

On the one hand, consumer culture,

teenagers coming up with, listening to rock and roll,

this whole sort of new Britain is beginning to emerge on the streets.

On the other hand, Britain is trying to understand its place

in the world. So, by the time the film had come out,

we had just had the Suez crisis where Britain had tried

to exert its old imperial power, and failed dismally.

So there was a sense that the old country,

the old muscle that Britain had internationally, was decaying.

At the same time, the society itself was changing.

So there's a sense of grasping for what actually is this country

and what's the tradition that we still have,

where are we going with this, who can we trust?

And the film, really, comes to the conclusion

that everybody is on the make now.

The consumer society offers opportunities to make a quick buck

selling fast goods, or for instance, in the case of I'm All Right Jack,

to sell weapons overseas, literally to our former enemies.

They're selling missiles to someone who is clearly

a reference to an Egyptian army officer.

So post-Suez, the factory in question

is selling missiles to the Egyptians.

There's this sense that the country is recovering

from its post-war bankruptcy by selling everything it can

all the time, and, really, without a sense of identity or pride

that it's trying to grasp at.

Handed a job by his unscrupulous uncle Bertram,

an oily Dennis Price, Carmichael's bumbling Windrush

will be thrown onto the factory floor,

essentially to stir up trouble.

But the comic twist is that he will be ostracised by both sides.

Because he proves to be too good at his job of driving a forklift truck.

He begins as a fool, and emerges as the voice of reason.

What the hell do you think you are doing?Shut that bleeding door!

Go on, get off out of it, will you? I do beg your pardon. I'm new here.

I should bloody well think you are. If you bring those things back here

you get back up the other end, that's where you ought to be.

You berk.

(FORKLIFT TRUCK POWERS ON)

I don't know, they're taking on some proper charlies nowadays,

aren't they, hey?

Right, here we go again.

I find that really funny, cos that's so true, you know,

that you only have to look at British politics

in the last few years to think that the idea

that you can drift out of Oxford and do anything,

even if you have no experience in it and no particular aptitude for it,

is a mistake that we still make today.

And those are really funny scenes at the beginning, I think,

when the character of Windrush,

one of the things that's so funny about him is that

he's completely oblivious to how rubbish he is.

You know, he genuinely thinks that there's nothing to these jobs,

that you can just turn up and just do them.

It's funny, cos it reminds me of David Cameron,

who was asked why did he want to become Prime Minister,

and he said, "Because I thought I'd be rather good at it".

And that's precisely what Windrush would say, you know,

why do you want to work for this detergent company?

"Ah, I thought I'd be rather good at it."

The brothers John and Roy Boulting,

who alternated being director and producer,

were committed liberals.

They mixed drama, including the great Brighton Rock,

with telling satires of British institutions

such as the academia of Lucky Jim,

or the diplomatic circles of Carlton-Browne of the FO.

With I'm All Right Jack, they paint a cynical picture of 1959.

Across the spectrum of British life,

there was a fear of escalating strikes,

even of revolution from below,

and of manipulation and corruption from above.

Roy tended to be the producer in many films,

and John tended to be the director.

However, that is not exclusive.

They were almost interchangeable in a way that some of the actors,

I think it was Terry-Thomas, actually, said, you know,

if Roy took off his glasses,

you had absolutely no idea who you were talking to.

It was only the glasses that actually would...

that they could distinguish one from the other.

So... And they had the same sort of ideas.

They were completely interchangeable and they worked brilliantly together

because they understood film,

they understood the techniques that they were using,

and they also understood that they were looking at society

in a way that perhaps hadn't been done before.

They had, strangely enough,

they evolved in the same way too,

in terms of moving from perhaps...

the left, politically,

a little bit more to the right,

just as a result of their joint experiences,

and because they had experiences together,

that they actually carried on evolving together,

almost as one unit.

As they moved into the 1950s,

they started using comedy to make their point.

So they would take jabs at British institutions,

for instance they had a film, Carlton-Browne of the FO,

which was mocking British foreign policy and the civil service.

But they always rooted it in that idea of showing real life.

They used location shooting as much as possible,

they wanted to anchor their stories in a very real world.

The comedies would also have a strong satirical edge,

and sometimes they would push the comedy out

into the almost fantastical,

not quite fantastical as in a dream sequences, but in terms of the plot.

They would exaggerate the plots to make the point.

It was reductio ad absurdum.

They would get to the point where they lionised a particular

institution to the point where it seemed ridiculous.

In the case of I'm All Right Jack, for instance, they used

mock industrial adverts saying how wonderful British industry was,

which were very accurate depictions of those industrial adverts

of the time, "British industry makes great strides",

and then they would juxtapose that

with the real nature of a British factory.

So reality, illusion, comedy, satire,

these are all merged together in a sequence of excellent films.

I am now nearing the end of my journey.

I hope I still have some services to render.

But in 1955, the advance of time did to Churchill

what dictators, armies, and war planes had failed to do.

He chose to surrender.

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip attended a formal dinner party

at the venerable statesman's residence at 10 Downing Street.

Sir Winston had announced the retirement at the age of 81,

an inspirational life of public service that had spanned

the reigns of Victoria and Elizabeth, was now at an end.

This is a changing Britain under the satirical microscope.

The old empire has gone with the war,

and the upper classes are plotting to hold on to the money.

However, inspired by the distant call of Karl Marx,

the workers are putting up a fight.

Oh, very good...

Dirty beast.

(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS)

Yes, here is another good one to start on.

Collective Childhood Factory Manhood.

Oh, it sounds fun. Here, it's very descriptive.

It's all about how they run factories in a worker's state.

However, I won't spoil it for you.

Have you ever been to Russia, Mr Kite?No, not yet.

One place I'd like to go to, though.

All them cornfields and ballet in the evening.

I wish I knew as much about it as you do.

Ian Carmichael's Windrush is a candid figure,

pawed by each side,

oblivious to politics, immune to the class struggle.

He just wants to find his place in the world,

and, in a sense, represents the emerging British middle class.

He is also a parody of the angry young man of the 50s,

finally stirred into denouncing all sides of the argument,

though no-one listens.

Dad, tell mum I'll be in late tonight, will you?

Very well, Cynthia. You on overtime, are you?Don't be daft.

Going out west, dancing.

My daughter Cynthia works here spindle polishing.

Really?

Ha, quite a job.

Because he has no idea what's going on,

he is sort of used and abused

by both the top brass, the management,

and the union workers, although, strangely enough,

he develops quite an interesting relationship

with Peter Sellers as Fred Kite.

Fred Kite is...

one of Peter Sellers' greatest achievements as an actor.

In fact, it's his first great achievement

as a fully-fledged actor, as opposed to just a comic actor.

He didn't originally want to play this role, he was rather reluctant.

He had done a film with the Boulting brothers before,

he got a small role in Carlton-Browne of the FO.

And when he was given the script for I'm All Right Jack,

he didn't think it was funny.

It took all the Boulting Brothers' sort of powers of diplomacy

to persuade him that this was going to be funny.

It was a fairly sketchy character in the original script,

but they gave him carte blanche to create the character.

And...

Sellers went right into deep research.

He started looking at newsreels of the union leaders,

not just here, but in the Soviet Union.

He started thinking about how the guy would walk,

how he would talk, what his language would be,

how he would dress, and basically,

Sellers is responsible for the character

that then emerged on the screen, that has become synonymous

with the kind of petty Napoleonic union leader

or a shop steward, as we say,

who thinks of himself as vitally important,

is an incredibly pompous little man,

and, yet, has power. He does have power

because he can actually call a strike at any time he wants to.

Mr Stevens, you're Chairman of the Shop Stewards' Committee,

you have decided today not to go back to work on Monday.

Why is that?

Well, the feeling by the mass of the workers on an amendment

to our resolution as a strike committee,

now a resolution being to return to work on Monday,

the workers are so incensed, they're so incensed by the fact

that they are not prepared to accept that intolerable conditions

that are being placed upon them, and are prepared to struggle

until they get certain assurances from the Ford Motor Company.

Right, brothers, have we all gathered?

My purpose in convening you is to lay before you certain facts.

A few minutes ago,

I was handed this paper by a representative of the management.

It purports to contain certain timings made by the management,

which directly affect the rates for the job that you are doing.

This is the first time that this has been mooted to the works

committee, everything about it constitutes quite definitely,

quite definitely, a definite breach of the existing agreements

that exist between management and the unions.

A diabolical liberty. ALL: Hear, hear.

But it is Peter Sellers who makes the film

like nothing he had ever done before.

Kite hints at something real,

with his short back and sides and toothbrush moustache,

a Chaplin of the factory floor.

Sellers is meticulous in his creation of character.

Kite is gloriously humourless and therefore very funny.

There is an air of tragic pretence about it.

He calls for a Marxist Utopia on a British industrial estate,

but at heart, yearns simply for importance.

The film begins with a Peter Sellers

sort of elaborate colonel character in a club, an old fusty club.

And this in a way represents the old Britain.

And then appears much later as a Trade Union official

from the new world, living a very particular modern kind of life.

So Sellers, if you like,

represents the flip... He flips in the way that society is flipping.

And there's something significant in that choice.

The Boulting brothers made a deliberate example of one person

flipping from one character to another,

and therefore demonstrating the way the world is changing.

Er, have you ever read any of Lenin's works, have you?

No, I'm afraid I haven't.

That'll lighten your eyes for you. Is he still on about Russia?

I'll tell you straight, it's all we ever get to hear in this house.

The thing that we must mention is of course that Fred Kite

is obsessed with the Soviet Union.

He is obsessed with Russia, all things Russian.

He doesn't ever refer to himself as a communist,

he says because, you know,

my politics are between my conscience and the ballot box.

But he is obviously, in his heart, he's a communist.

But he's got a sort of strange grasp

of what it is to be in the Soviet Union,

and he sort of dreams of this place where,

you know, full of cornfields and then there's ballet in the evening.

You can see that the man is deluded, although he's not malicious,

he's not cruel, he's just sort of... sort of power crazed,

and completely deluded.

The Boultings are taking a swipe at everyone.

Kite's workers are hardly heroic,

including such familiar comedy figures as Terry Scott,

Kenneth Griffith, and Victor Madden,

they are portrayed as work shy and devious,

as equally the target of the smug meaning behind the title,

I'm All Right Jack, as their self-serving bosses.

One of the delights of the film is there's a gallery

of British comedy actors who have all worked together before.

Boulting brothers know them, and they are able to cast them

in roles that they just inhabit

without even thinking about it.

You have Terry-Thomas as the sort of personnel manager,

who is kind of the liaison between the management and the workers.

He has no respect for the workers obviously whatsoever,

and very quickly delineates them as shower,

"They are just like some shower."

And he recognises Windrush,

of course, immediately, he sees his name on the card.

He says, "He was a stinker in the army, and he's a stinker now".

But he doesn't really have...

He doesn't really have much respect for the management either.

So when he realises that

what they're trying to do with Windrush,

he's got this expression of sort of, "Oh, crikey,

you really don't know what you're getting into, do you?

There's John Le Mesurier,

as a very 50s thing called Time in Motion Man,

which is sort of, in a way,

a forerunner of management consultancy.

He's essentially there to tell the company

how they can make their systems more efficient.

So he's constantly hated by everybody wherever he goes.

And, as a result, he has this twitch,

the whole time, which is very funny

because you know that he's got this totally thankless job,

where he's basically there to work out

just how lazy the workers are,

and how the management can make them work harder.

And he knows that everyone hates him,

and he's still...

John Le Mesurier has this perfect face for that.

In a lovely, ironic sub-plot,

the authoritarian Kite finds himself in thrall

to the new-found ideals of his wife,

the always delectable Irene Handl.

Weary of waiting upon her egalitarian husband hand and foot,

SHE decides to go on strike.

While his daughter, Liz Frazer, a factory worker, keen on Windrush,

will prove another thorn in the side of the great socialist leader.

The film's satirical targets are, in effect, everybody in the UK,

the way the country is changing.

So everything is held up for mockery.

What survived with this film,

and what perhaps gives this film its reputation,

is it's one of the first films to pick the trade union movement

as an object of mockery and satire.

And that's because, at this point,

the trade union movement is part of the establishment in itself.

It is a powerful force in the country.

If we were to make this film now,

we would look far more closely at the deals the management are doing.

The management are up to the kind of corrupt deals

that still feature in films, dodgy arms deals,

you know, forcing workers into particular forms of behaviour.

But in those days, the idea that the trade unions had a force

and a power to play and had their own level of corruption,

was socially real, it was socially appropriate,

and also relatively novel to depict on screen.

It had to be depicted carefully because a lot of people

in the country, the audience, the people who have paid to go

and see this film, would be in work places, in trade unions.

You had to get it right, get that mockery, that satire, spot on.

It's easier to lampoon, you know,

a foolish former major than it is

to make a joke about someone's work mates

that they recognise and laugh along with and at.

Opposite Kite and his slovenly workers

are the cads and bounders of management.

Dennis Price is the untrustworthy factory owner Bertram Tracepurcel.

While Terry-Thomas is the twitchy middle manager, Hitchcock.

In a rare, rakish tone, Boulting favourite,

Richard Attenborough, has a whale of a time as Sydney DeVere Cox,

head of the rival factory, in cahoots with Bertram.

Here! Where do you think you're going?

On strike, gov. On strike?

What are you on strike for? In sympathy with Missiles.

Sympathy? What about a bit of sympathy for me?

Excuse me, Mr Cox? Ah, shut up!

Don't know what that lot's suddenly turned up for,

they won't see nothing, the strike is solid.

Why don't you tell them to ph-photograph something worthwhile?

Hello? What's he come here for?

Set in an unnamed British city, the exteriors of Missiles Limited

were filmed at the Flexilo factory in Slough,

and the interiors at Shepperton Studios.

It could be described as docudrama,

or indeed, docu-comedy in style,

but there is great visual contrast between the factory yard,

the mundane management offices,

and the plush clubs where the plotting is done.

The fact that the film is set in a missile factory is critical,

although understated.

It features as a sub-plot, but the driving sub-plot.

It's the idea that moves the whole film forward.

What is also showing is that Britain is no longer portraying itself

as a military power that can exert force.

It's now a military trader. It sells weapons.

In this case, it's selling weapons to the Egyptians.

Of course, this is just after the Suez crisis,

where British troops and Egyptian troops had exchanged fire.

So we are now selling a missile to the Egyptian army,

who, for all intents and purposes, who knew,

it could be used against British troops in the future.

That's the way we do business these days.

And you're a provocateur, that's what you are.

No, no, Mr Kite. You whited sepulchre, you.

Talked your way into the union, wormed your way into my house,

and all the time you was a... you was a fifth column in our midst.

I didn't mean to upset you like this, Mr Kite.

Do you mind if I drive on into the factory?Oh, no, you don't.

Come on.

(CROWD BOOING) Fascists!

All right, go on in, if you're going.

You filthy traitor, Windrush!

Judas!

What the bosses are trying to do

is exploit Ian Carmichael's incompetence,

Windrush's incompetence, for their own ends.

And, in fact, it backfires on them

because his incompetence creates this sort of

accidental whistle blower,

who, then, after a while,

becomes a national hero.

He is the one who eventually turns up at the factory gates,

in a bubble car, no less, and a bubble car of course,

was emblematic of the new era of the 1960s.

You know, a proper bubble car too, not the Messerschmitt one,

which was kind of, you know, just incredible.

It was, the next one was the Mini, you know,

but this was before the Mini.

So he's already sort of looking ahead.

And he walks in and says I've got to work. And he becomes...

He's sent to Coventry and he becomes a national hero.

And the...

That gives him the power in a funny sort of way,

although he doesn't realise it, to actually change things.

"With gratitude for your fight against the rising cost of living,

this gift comes to you from five Cheltenham ladies

living on fixed incomes."

How very kind, Stanley.

Jolly kind indeed, Aunt.

Just listen to all that cheer.

(WOMEN CHEERING OUTSIDE)

How long have they been there, Aunt Dolly?Hours, dear.

What a nation we British are once we are stirred.

CROWD: (CHANTS) ..who are born of thee

wider still, and wider...

And the children of Babylon are destroyed

and become an abomination in the eyes of lasciviousness.

Three cheers for Mr Churchill and Stanley Windrush.

Hip, hip, hooray!

Hip, hip, hooray! CROWD: We want Stanley!

The two big sides in this film are the management and the workers,

although around this, the Boulting brothers put the government,

they put the media, they mock tabloid press, you know,

they mock the way that the country sees this conflict.

But the real conflict is between management and the workers.

If you look at the script and you look at who is mocked

and what they're mocked for,

both sides are equally venal, equally silly.

What Peter Sellers brought to Kite

was so strong and so influential and so recognisable,

that that became the stand-out role from the film.

And so it, in a way, it was seen,

it's become an example of a joke about trade unionism.

But the script doesn't do that. The script is pretty even handed.

It's just the brilliance of Peter Sellers' performance,

that made people recognise something for the first time.

It became this symbolic gesture about the problems

with the trade union organisation in the workplace.

I don't think that's what the Boulting brothers

were intending to do. They weren't making this an anti-union film.

It was the strength of the performance

that made people interpret it that way.

As the strike escalates to a nation-wide scale,

Windrush will be invited onto a television

discussion programme called "Argument",

hosted by the actual Malcolm Muggeridge.

As Windrush plaintively calls for sense,

the programme, and by association, Britain,

descends into total chaos.

The film caused a stir on its release.

The left-wing press saw it as an attack on the union movement,

while the right-wing papers declared it as anti-establishment.

They were right on both counts,

and it became the number one film of 1959.

Though more broadly comic,

here were the early stirrings of the British new wave.

It's difficult to say how much

I'm All Right Jack still means to Britain

in terms of the 21st century, where we are.

Certainly as a snapshot of its era,

it is vitally significant, no question about that.

Not just in terms of the relationships

between various parties involved here,

but also just in the way of looking at the locations.

It's a snapshot of a sort of a lost landscape.

(HORN BLARES)

(HORN STOPS) (AGITATED CHATTER)

Essential problems,

which are industrial relations,

but beyond that, human venality and greed

are still with us, and of course they will always be with us.

People will always be looking to find...

the next opportunity to make a fast buck.

The only thing that's different, is, of course,

that there are many, many, many more zeroes on the end of the cheque.

I'm All Right Jack, is both a historical political document,

and, terrifyingly, a very relevant political critique

of the way that Britain is trying to make its way in the world.

This is a film that says to the audience at the end of the

Second World War, we don't really know how to build our own...

consumer culture, we don't know how to exert our military power.

The idea of a useless missile company

is something that you could make today.

Submarines firing off missiles that don't work

is very much a part of the British news today.

Governments walking out of debates and falling out on television,

this is a part of today.

There's almost nothing in this film that isn't about now, and then.

It joins together these two moments.

And both of these ideas are about a country that's losing its way

in the world, a country that's trying to understand,

after an enormous history as one particular kind of country,

still, I feel, the country hasn't come to terms

with what happened in the 1950s, and the after effects of that.

We're still groping for a particular sense of identity

and the comedy in that, is very easy to find.

What the Boulting brothers note and do very, very subtly,

is that there is also a deep, deep tragedy too.

I think the film really sets itself out

as a document of post-war Britain.

I think it does it very deliberately, right from the start.

The jokes in the film are on all levels, you know,

they're very sort of clever verbal jokes, particularly from Fred Kite.

But there is also some really broad visual comedy,

such as the moment when Ian Carmichael

is being forced to eat so many Num-yum samples,

that he's now feeling sick,

and the big machine, which produces the Num-yum stuff,

is designed in a shape of two big eyes and a big mouth.

And just at the moment he totters off the screen to be sick,

the machine disgorges a load of Num-yum fluid,

which is very, very clearly designed

to look like the machine is being sick.

And it's a really, really big...

childish joke, and really funny.

Boil it down, and I'm All Right Jack

is about the central political divide of post-war Britain,

between socialism and conservatism,

or the working-class and the upper class,

with the emerging middle class caught between.

There's a film that spoke to us era, but what is so telling

is that everything the Boultings took to task in 1959

remains relevant today.

It was a premonition of a future where nothing has changed.

Oh go on, be a sport!

I bet you're jolly good! Oh, come on, Stanley!

None of us are terribly hot, you know.

I wouldn't be any good, honestly.

Rubbish! He's only just being modest.

Come on, ladies, come and make him play.

(WOMEN LAUGHING)

Oh, no!

No, Father!

Help!

(WOMEN LAUGHING)

# I'm all right, Jack, I'm OK

# That is the message for today

# So count up your lolly, feather your nest

# Let someone else worry, boy, I couldn't care less

# You scratch my back I'll do the same for you, Jack

# That's the message for today #

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