Kingsley Amis's first novel was
published in 1954. It was entitled Lucky Jim, and like the novel Patrick
Campbell screenplay told of the exploits of one James Dixon, a reluctant
history lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university. The novel tells
about a contemporary young man and how he makes his way in life in a post
war world that combines new and declining attitudes. But the Boulting Brothers film
adaptation does not adequately deal with the subject
of upward social mobility in the case of Jim Dixon, of a lower middle class
character coming to terms with the upper class who refuse to recognise a person of equal intelligence but without the advantages
of the British higher class system.
Amis's novel may have been written as a modern
social comedy but as Lindsay Anderson opined about the film "the original comedy has been transformed
into a conventional farce"[1].
He also noted that the characters had been flattened, simplified and
vulgarized, and that the story had been wholly abstracted from reality and that
Jim Dixon who can't do right for doing wrong (in the typical form of actor Ian Carmichael) had been stripped of
all personality and turned into a farcical unprofessional figure: the college
idiot. Similar to, what Lindsay calls the 'George Formby formula' including the
speeded up car chase and getting the girl as his just reward as if life’s
success can be judged by the quality of the women on your arm!
 |
| Jim Dixon with his reward for being a twit!! |
Made at the MGM Studios at Boreham Wood,
Lucky
Jim (1957) is tad predictable and full of textbook upper class types
who are so wet they stand in their own puddles. There is a certain humour although
it mainly involves a large ugly dog that sings along to some dreadful chamber
music. Thankfully the film was made on the eve of a revolution in British
filmmaking that would help save us from such
stupid daft films like this one.
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