Great Britain

Honoured by the British Film Academy with the awards of Best British Screenplay and Best Performance by a British Actor (Peter Sellers) of 1959, I'm All Right Jack has more than stood the test of time as a topical and hilariously witty comment on the stupidities and hypocrisies of the class war. When it opened, it infuriated many leading figures on both sides of the union fence. Twenty years later the film was still felt to be so hard-hitting that the BBC decided against showing it on television just before the Parliamentary Election of 1979. I'm All Right Jack remains as up-to-date as every headline which blames 'autocratic' managements or 'money grabbing' unions for everything from inflation to weather. Like all the best British humour, this comedy's roots go deep into the rich soil of the realities and eccentricities of our lives. All the characters are recognisable types. Laughing at their behaviour we laugh no only at the people we meet every day but also at ourselves; though most of us cannot help but identify with the hapless cause of all the trouble, the upperclass twit Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael), who eventually proves to have more down-to-earth commonsense than all the bowler-hatted and cloth-capped clever Dicks who use him as a pawn in their money-making games. This is the film that launched Peter Sellers on the road to international stardom. Before he created the tragi-comic shop steward Fred Kite, with his mangled sentences, pinched mouth, arrogant strut and pathetic loneliness, Sellers was known as a Goon and laughter-making clown. Kite established him as a top-line character actor worthy of stardom, opposite Sophia Loren in The Millionairess and led to his transformation into a sexy leading man. But Kite lives on as one of Seller's finest performances ever; and as an awful warning to every public speaker. MARJORIE BILBOW