Monday, 7th OCTOBER 2002 UP THE LADDER!!!
featuring: I’M ALRIGHT JACK (1959) This British-made Boulting brothers satire on labour-management relations was a huge success in Britain. It begins with young Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael), an Oxford grad just back from the war, attempting to find a job in industrial management. Stanley, through innocent naivete has a penchant for making trouble and is quickly sacked from every company that hires him. To the rescue, or so it seems, is Stanley's Uncle Bertie (Dennis Price), offering him work at his company Missles, Inc. as unskilled labour with opportunity for advancement. Stanley jumps at the chance, but unbeknownst to him, Bertie is in cahoots with rival manufacturer, Union Jack Foundries, and is fully expecting Stanley’s presence to cause union problems. An ambassador from a middle eastern country has just signed a large arms contract, and if Missles, Inc. can't deliver the goods due to the strike, Union Jack can pick it up- at a substantially higher price, of course, with the excess amount being pocketed by the co-conspirators.
Fred Kite takes Stanley in as a boarder and soon likeable Stanley ingratiates himself with Mrs. Kite (Irene Handel) and especially their daughter (Liz Frazer). Just as Stanley begins to fit in with his fellow union brothers, he is approached by a time and motion man, the nemesis of any union. Stanley unwittingly allows himself to be timed, resulting in the inevitable strike. Snubbed by the workers, Stanley becomes a hero in the press as the man who caused a strike by working too hard. Soon, the whole country is on strike in sympathy with Missles, Inc., including Union Jack Foundries, putting a crimp in Uncle Bertie's plan. The film is slow in setting up the situation, but picks up with the entrance of Fred Kite, by far the most interesting character in the film. He is puffed-up, full of self-importance and sporting an ill-fitting suit, military haircut and Hitleresque mustache, he embodies physically, his unbending union mindset. Sellers does here what he does best, for which he garnered the British Academy Award. He creates a three-dimensional character out of what could easily have been a caricature. In spite of his ego, Kite has vulnerability and evokes sympathy. While he and his cohorts at work are constantly appeased by wishy-washy management in order to avoid a strike, at home Kite gets no respect from his family who have grown tired of his marxist rhetoric. On the homefront he is management and they are the rebellious workers.
Hilarious pastiche of '50s class struggles, this film will have you laughing if you have liked any of the Ealing comedies, are a Sellers fan, or just think that maybe the means of production should be controlled by the state after all. I'm Alright, Jack has a fine cast and Irene Handel is top-notch as Mrs. Kite. If you hold on through the slow beginning, you'll find I'm Alright, Jack a witty and amusing film. Prod: ROY BOULTING. Dir: JOHN BOULTING. Wr: Frank Harvey, JOHN BOULTING, Alan Hackney. Phot: Max Greene. Ed: Anthony Harvey. Cast: IAN CARMICHAEL, TERRY THOMAS, PETER SELLERS, MARGARET RUTHERFORD, RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH, IRENE HANDL, DENNIS PRICE. 105 mins. NFVLS.
THE PETER PRINCIPLE (1970) Thirty years ago, Dr. Laurence J. Peter (1919-1990) came up with the startling - yet somehow unsurprising - proposition that the world is dominated by incompetents. The "Peter Principle" proposes that, in any hierarchical organisation, an employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence, and that is where he stays. By extension, actual "work" can only be accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence. In this snazzy little photo-primer, Peter points out some of the dangers of working in a hierarchy. For the individual, there are real dangers of stress, while for the organisation there are the obvious penalties of inefficiency and incompetence. Pick up a copy of the book, and, yay, even its sequel, THE PETER PRESCRIPTION, down the local Op Shop. It'll probably only cost you 25 cents, but its true value would be incalculable. Mus: Paddy Kingsland (BBC Radiophonic Workshop). 25 mins. NFVLS.
MY BIG CHANCE (1977) An employee and his boss confront each other. The boss' cliches about the future of the business are illustrated by images on the screen. The future for the company and the right people is bright, but this employee is fired. Prod Co: Swinburne Institute of Technology Film and Television Dept. Dir: Dennis Tupicoff. 2 mins. NFVLS. CHOCOLATE (1970) Using the old tv-ad mainstay, people taste what they do not know to be a cocoa bean and try to guess what it was. We also get to see the manufacture of chocolate, from the extraction of the nuts from the cocoa buds to the addition of sugar to the chocolate powder. Prod Co: Films Incorporated. Prod,Dir: Frank Buxton. ( - Buxton directed shows like MORK AND MINDY, and HAPPY DAYS, and did voicework on BATFINK). Appearing: WOODY ALLEN, JONATHAN WINTERS, JOANNE WORLEY. 4 mins. ALC.
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