I’m All Right Jack

I’m All Right Jack
Kino Lorber – Blu ray
1959 – 105 Min.
Starring Ian Carmichael, Peter Sellers, Terry-Thomas
Cinematography by Mutz Greenbaum (Aka Max Greene)
Written by John Boulting, Frank Harvey, Alan Hackney
Directed by John Boulting, Roy Boulting

On Thursday, May 8, 1945, Winston Churchill appears before an adoring crowd to announce the end of the war in Europe. Well, mostly adoring. When the Prime Minister flashes his famous “V” for victory sign, a jubilant soldier returns the gesture with his own crassly defiant salute. In I’m All Right Jack, no sacred cow is safe; though Europe has been liberated, so have Britain’s finest satirists.

Directed by John Boulting and his twin brother Roy, I’m All Right Jack is the story of Stanley Windrush, a trustworthy soul in an untrustworthy world. Played by Ian Carmichael, the accident-prone Windrush first stumbled onto the scene in Boulting’s Private’s Progress, an army farce starring Richard Attenborough, Dennis Price, and Terry-Thomas, all of whom return in this, the second (and final) chapter of Stanley’s adventures. The Boulting’s essential joke is that Stanley’s “progress” is no progress at all; his life story is the very definition of “no good deed goes unpunished.”

Out of the army and into the frying pan, Stanley has returned home to a dead end. His family is of little help; his father, played by Miles Malleson, prefers the sunny serenity of the Sunnyglades Nudist Camp to London’s financial districts while his Aunt Dolly, played by Margaret Rutherford, is one determined dowager—she demands that Stanley hit the employment bureau to find the kind of work suitable for a man of his station. He does, and finds nothing but trouble.

An interview with the Netto Corporation (they manufacture laundry detergent) goes awry when Stanley points out the soap’s itchy aftereffects, and an audition at the Num-Yum Company (they make sugary cake treats) is a gooey, gross-out disaster (it’s also a comic triumph with nods to Metropolis, Modern Times, and Monty Python’s Mr. Creosote). To the rescue comes Stanley’s Uncle, Bertram Tracepurcel, a snake in the grass played by Dennis Price—he knows a mark when he sees one, even if its his own flesh and blood. Along for the scam is Stanley’s old army mate, Sidney DeVere Cox (Attenborough). Their plot: employ Stanley at Tracepurcel’s munitions factory—once inside, his predictably disruptive presence will ensure the success of their get-rich-quick scheme; selling weapons to the Arabs.

The uncle knows his nephew too well; though a perennial bungler, Windrush’s can-do attitude ingratiates him to Major Hitchcock, the  company’s personnel director, an avid admirer of the status quo (he’s played by Terry-Thomas). His co-workers have a different view, to these layabouts Stanley is worse than a sell-out, he’s a scab in the making. A strike is called and chaos ensues. Enter Major Hitchcock’s bête noire, Fred Kite, the factory’s shop steward played by Peter Sellers.

John Boulting, Frank Harvey, and Alan Hackney wrote the multi-layered script, a raucous satire of post-war consumerism, the arms race, and trade unions that manages to be subtle when necessary. The combative Kite (based on the notorious but effective British union leader Frank Cousins) is at first glance the film’s villain. But he is in many ways the good-hearted Stanley’s doppelgänger: each man holds tight to their own code of arms no matter how idealistic (critic Raymond Durgnant described Kite as “a Communist Don Quixote.”)

One of the more complex characters in Seller’s career, bringing Fred Kite to life was a struggle for the insecure funny man. Sellers thought there was nothing humorous about the bulldog with the Hitler mustache, and he was right; on the page Kite’s dialog is more like a manifesto, the words of a jackbooted martinet. It was up to Sellers give this blueprint for a human being some kind of a soul. He won the British academy award for his effort (leaving Laurence Olivier and Richard Burton to lick their wounds).

Cheerfully fatalistic, I’m All Right Jack isn’t mean-spirited. It has the head-long energy of great political broadsides like The Front Page and Hail the Conquering Hero. The title refers to a saying that originated in the Royal Navy, “Fuck you Jack, I’m all right,” meaning, “I got mine, now you get yours.”

I’m All Right Jack takes aim at management, labor, and everything inbetween, and though the politics are convoluted, the Boulting’s satire cuts through the morass—such straight talk was a hit with British moviegoers, lines formed at the box office and the Queen arranged a screening at the Palace. Such respectability is dangerous but the Boulting’s film, a combustive mix of Candide and a Carry On film, remains bracing and provocative, a quality embodied, so to speak, by Liz Fraser as Stanley’s class conscious but frisky paramour.

The late Liz is featured on Kino Lorber’s new Blu ray release along with a few other extras. The disc itself looks smashing—Mutz Greenbaum’s bold black and white cinematography shines in the space-age interiors of the Num-Yum factory, showing off the kind of deep shadowed detail worthy of a 4K transfer. Other extras include a feature length commentary by comedy historians Gemma and Robert Ross plus the original theatrical trailer.