The Admirable Crichton

A film that begins in England. Lord Loam has an idea. He says he believes in equality and once a month calls his servants into the drawing room and serves them tea. Everyone is uncomfortable. The servants and the family alike. Crichton is the butler. He does not care for the performance; to him everyone has a place and that place is natural. The family goes on a sea voyage. The yacht sinks. Those who reach land are on an island. They have nothing with them. From there the film is a story of building again. Fire, water, shelter, food. The lord and his daughters can do nothing. They cannot cook, tie a knot, or hunt. Crichton can. Within weeks the order reverses. He gives the orders and everyone listens. Nobody decides it. It simply happens. Two years pass. The island becomes a settlement; a water mill, electricity, planted fields. The lord's daughter Mary now wants to marry Crichton. Then a ship appears on the horizon. What the narrative is interested in is not an island but a return: its real question is whether everyone will go back to their old place when the ship comes, and what Crichton thinks about it. He makes the decision himself and the narrative does not present it as a victory. The source is J. M. Barrie's play, first staged in 1902. The tone is comic but the idea is hard. The narrative shows that class is not natural and in the end puts it back anyway. The colour and design are at the standard of British production in the fifties. Kenneth More, Diane Cilento, Cecil Parker, Sally Ann Howes and Martita Hunt are in the cast. Lewis Gilbert directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes British class comedy and stage adaptations. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a sharp conclusion; the narrative sets up its criticism and withdraws it in the last section.