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A key intermediary work, one foot in Ealing gentility, the other in the abrasion of Anderson, Reisz et al. John Boulting's technique approaches Tashlin's in this "story of a nation," Peter Sellers in Colonel Blimp makeup expires with the war before the credits usher in rock 'n' roll and doodles ("Oh! Brave New World"). The lamb is an aristocratic ninny (Ian Carmichael), out of Oxford and eager to stumble up and down the economic ladder. Honesty equals imbecility at the detergent company, at the Num-Yum factory he's a kid in a candy store until he pukes into the mixer. (Bowler hat goes in and chocolate comes out, cf. the bread contraption in The Rake's Progress.) Missiles Ltd. accepts him, amid the proletariat he's just the unwitting agent provocateur management needs. "Fascist!" "Bolshy!" Industrial Britain, as Grierson would say, plenty of nose-thumbing to go around. Margaret Rutherford is the old empire's stuffed bull elephant, Richard Attenborough and Dennis Price its weasels, on the other side unionists are just as steeped in cynicism, lethargy and prejudice. Lovers' lane right by the rubbish dump, the Middle East situation, the teenybopper (Liz Fraser) whose vacant stare comes to life at the sound of a double-entendre. ("Commercial intercourse with foreigners," she's told of export business.) At the center of the whirlwind, Sellers' Marxist shop steward becomes a soulful presence—his dogged earnestness harmonizes perfectly with Terry-Thomas' greasy guile. "From what I can see, the only time you ever jolly well do any work's when you're on strike." A flash on clarity on live TV recognizes the charlatans, though the Capra salvation is halted for a trip to the sanitarium. Boulting closes with a fine Daumier image, injustice running bare-assed into the new decade. With Irene Handl, Miles Malleson, Marne Maitland, John Le Mesurier, Raymond Huntley, and Malcolm Muggeridge. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |