The Admirable Crichton (1957)
Directed by Lewis Gilbert

Film Review

If J. M. Barrie's class conscious stage play The Admirable Crichton had the capacity to shock audiences when it was first seen at the turn of the 20th century the same can definitely not be said of this staid but likeable film adaptation.  Tame almost to the point of docility, Lewis Gilbert's film contributes barely a spent cartridge to the class war that was raging (or at least rumbling on) in Britain in the 1950s.  Taken at face value the film is easily written off as an inconsequential crowdpleaser (it was one of the most successful British films of the year), an attractively shot period piece with a stunning exotic location and a cast so likeable you end up wishing you could adopt half of them.  Viewed from a more ironic perspective the film appears to make the grimmest prognostication of the British class system, namely that it will be with us always as every British subjects would seem to be singularly endowed with a sense of his or her place in the scheme of things.

The darling of the decade (but soon forgotten afterwards), Kenneth More is admirably suited to play the supremely efficient butler Crichton (who would incidentally become the inspiration for the character Kryten in the BBC television sitcom Red Dwarf).  More's effortless satin-tongued smoothness makes a jarring contrast with Diane Cilento's slightly over-enthusiastic imitation of a common urchin maid, who ends up sounding more like the Artful Dodger choking on a bag of marbles than Eliza Doolittle.  Martita Hunt brings a touch of class in role that was so obviously intended for Edith Evans and a bare-chested Gerald Harper crops up to threaten More's supremacy in the smoothness stakes, a decade before his British television successes Adam Adamant Lives! and Hadleigh.  Another great star of stage and screen (now immortalised as Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), Sally Ann Howes is at her most radiant here, out-classing the film's notional female lead Cilento with the kind of celluloid-scorching glamour which, at the time, was rarely found outside the upper echelons of the Hollywood set.  It is the most sumptuous cast, which is well-served by Wilkie Cooper's equally sumptuous colour photography.  The only let down is a script that fails to sparkle and Gilbert's generally complacent direction, although neither of these greatly dims the film's entertainment value.

Film Synopsis

England, 1905.  The Earl of Loam and his three eligible young daughters owe the smooth functioning of their household to their hyper-efficient butler, Crichton.  An outspoken egalitarian he may be but the Earl is incensed when one of his daughters becomes mixed up with the suffragettes.  To avoid a scandal, the Earl agrees to Crichton's suggestion that the family should take a long yachting holiday in the South Seas.  Disaster strikes when the yacht's engines explode and the passengers are forced to take to the lifeboats.  Crichton ends up being stranded on a desert island with the Earl, his three daughters, two effete young noblemen and tweeny Eliza, the lowliest servant in the Earl's household.  Without Crichton's instinctive knack for survival his uppercrust masters would soon have perished and it is fitting that he should acquire the most respected position on the island, that of Governor.  Two years pass and the islanders could not be happier in their improvised paradise.  But then a ship appears on the horizon and Crichton has a terrible decision to make...