THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON (1957) ** It must have been nice to write in an overtly socially stratified culture, it provided so many targets. The aim is more bemused than nasty here, and so wouldn't be particularly interesting if not for the leading man butler vitality of Kenneth More. The whole mansion worth of characters gets shipwrecked you see, so the rhetorical question of who has the most valuable skills rears its proverbial head. For reasons that were probably unintentional the rich bitch (Sally Ann Howes) always appears to have as much soul and spunk as salt-of-the-earth maid Cecil Parker, of course that sort of thing is always possible if not a statistical likelihood. The most interesting point that the film makes is when it transpires that no one wants to go back to England; highlighting if only peripherally the phenomenon of British Bali-envy that knows no social bounds. It's never clear why the characters think that things must change, especially into an existence rejected and recognized as inferior, but whatever the answer is would also explain the continued existence of various political parties. Moral? Smart guys eventually bail their masters, and perhaps the best ones leave things intact.
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