Private's Progress

During and in the immediate aftermath of WW2, the British film industry turned out a flotilla of films endorsing the valour of its Armed Forces. Clearly by 1956 times had changed enough for the Boulting Brothers to be able to poke fun at this propagandistic image with a delightful comedy about a War Office scheme to steal art treasures from under the noses of the Germans and ex-patriate them to England.

Well-scripted by John Harvey and John Boulting and with a raft of the best comic actors of the period including Dennis Price, John Le Mesurier, the incomparable Terry-Thomas, Ian Carmichael as a dithering twit and Richard Attenborough, who had made more than his fair share of flag-wavers, the film is a guaranteed chuckle for anyone who loves British comedy of the 1950s with Price and Terry-Thomas in particularly good form.

FYI: Boulting would re-team many of the cast members with Carmichael reprising a variant on his Stanley Windrush character in I'm Alright Jack (1959)

DVD Extras: None  

 

Want something different?