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Films from Abroad: Progress and Poverty

1957; University of California Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1209746

2328-9953

Andrew C. Mayer,

Political and Economic history of UK and US

THE NEW BRITISH COMEDY Private's Progress is practically an American picture, in everything but the accents. The plot is one of those long, complicated affairs about army life that, at various times, have made use of the talents of such stalwarts as Abbot and Costello, Martin and Lewis, and, if memory serves, Laurel and Hardy. As is customary in such things, there are two principal characters, the stooge (Ian Carmichal) and the wide boy (Richard Attenborough), who have a sort of Trilby-and-Svengali relationship. Of course each is ultimately recognized and rewarded as he deserves. For the most part, the strictly GI routines are so familiar as to be largely uninteresting-the awkwardness of new recruits being drilled, the peremptory nature of a medical inspection at sick call, the neurotic tendencies of the psychiatrist. Nevertheless, some of the newer gags are very nicely worked out. The orientation talk, for example, is a masterpiece. It begins with an utterly incomprehensible presentation of charts by an inept young officer and eventually deteriorates into a wonderfully detailed lecture by Richard Attenborough on how to cheat the British railway system out of its fares. The Information and Education program must have constituted a serious menace to the sanity of practically every soldier in World War II, and its possibilities for satire are virtually unlimited; but until now it seems to have escaped anything more than passing mention. Another novel gimmick shows how a small detail of larcenous trainees are able to sequester about a third of all the supplies they unload from a truck.