Jim Dixon is a junior lecturer at an unnamed provincial university. Kingsley Amis, who wrote the novel on which this film is based, took his title from a song- "Oh, lucky Jim, How I envy him..." (We hear this song a couple of times during the film). As the story opens, however, Jim does not seem to be particularly lucky or enviable. Indeed, his life can be summed up in the words of the theme-song from "Friends":-
"Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D. O. A."
He hates his job and his boss, Professor Welch. He is perpetually short of cash and forced to live in a seedy lodging-house. His relationship with his possessive, needy girlfriend Margaret appears to be going nowhere and, while he has set his cap at an attractive blonde named Christine, that relationship also appears to be doomed as she is the girlfriend of Welch's novelist son Bertrand.
The novel has long been a favourite of mine, but I have never had the same affection for the film version, largely because the film-makers never manage to find an equivalent for Amis's bitingly satirical authorial voice. Scenes which are brilliantly funny in the book, such as Professor Welch's disastrous musical weekend, in the course of which Jim manages to set fire to his bed, or the one in which Jim delivers a lecture while drunk, never come to life in the same way on the screen. The scriptwriters also include some episodes of slapstick humour not found in the book, such as Jim's attempt to organise the floral decorations at an academic ceremony or the chase scene at the end, but these are no substitute for Amis's savage wit.
Ian Carmichael was later to gain a reputation for playing upper-class characters such as Bertie Wooster or the aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey, but in 1957 these productions still lay in the future. Even so he still seems a bit too posh for Jim, who is supposed to be a working-class Northerner, as well as a bit too old at 37. This means that the question of social class, an important theme in the novel, is rather avoided in the film. Contrary to what one reviewer writes, Amis, who in 1954 still considered himself to be on the Left, was not using "Lucky Jim" to satirise well-heeled bourgeois Leftists. (Later, when he had moved sharply to the Right, he was to lay into radical-chic champagne socialists with gusto in novels like "Girl, 20" from 1971). Professor Welch, with his romantic fantasies of some pre-modern pre-industrial "Merrie England", is a nostalgia-obsessed cultural conservative, and Bertrand probably a political one.
The Jim of the novel is in many ways a flawed character. For one who hopes to make a living by teaching history, he displays a surprising lack of enthusiasm for his subject. He drinks too much, often treats Margaret badly and can be rude and tactless. He devotes a lot of energy to pursuing feuds against those who annoy him and can be oddly childish. The character in the film is very much watered down in an attempt to make him more likeable; this attempt succeeds to some extent, but at the cost of also making him less interesting.
Maureen Connell's Margaret is less neurotic, hysterical and manipulative here than she is in the book, and as a result becomes completely forgettable. Sharon Acker's Christine is almost equally so. (Christine was English in the book but here becomes Canadian, possibly in order to make the film more marketable in North America). Those characters in the film who do stand out tend to be those who are played in the same way as they are in the novel, notably Hugh Griffith's absent-minded, evasive, pedantic and pretentious Professor Welch and Terry-Thomas's pompous, self-important, snobbish and bullying Bertrand. (Like Carmichael, however, Terry-Thomas at 46 was really too old. He was actually a year older than Griffith who plays his father).
The film is not altogether a bad one and can provide a few amusing moments. When one considers how good its source novel is, however, it really should have been a lot better. 6/10.
"Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D. O. A."
He hates his job and his boss, Professor Welch. He is perpetually short of cash and forced to live in a seedy lodging-house. His relationship with his possessive, needy girlfriend Margaret appears to be going nowhere and, while he has set his cap at an attractive blonde named Christine, that relationship also appears to be doomed as she is the girlfriend of Welch's novelist son Bertrand.
The novel has long been a favourite of mine, but I have never had the same affection for the film version, largely because the film-makers never manage to find an equivalent for Amis's bitingly satirical authorial voice. Scenes which are brilliantly funny in the book, such as Professor Welch's disastrous musical weekend, in the course of which Jim manages to set fire to his bed, or the one in which Jim delivers a lecture while drunk, never come to life in the same way on the screen. The scriptwriters also include some episodes of slapstick humour not found in the book, such as Jim's attempt to organise the floral decorations at an academic ceremony or the chase scene at the end, but these are no substitute for Amis's savage wit.
Ian Carmichael was later to gain a reputation for playing upper-class characters such as Bertie Wooster or the aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey, but in 1957 these productions still lay in the future. Even so he still seems a bit too posh for Jim, who is supposed to be a working-class Northerner, as well as a bit too old at 37. This means that the question of social class, an important theme in the novel, is rather avoided in the film. Contrary to what one reviewer writes, Amis, who in 1954 still considered himself to be on the Left, was not using "Lucky Jim" to satirise well-heeled bourgeois Leftists. (Later, when he had moved sharply to the Right, he was to lay into radical-chic champagne socialists with gusto in novels like "Girl, 20" from 1971). Professor Welch, with his romantic fantasies of some pre-modern pre-industrial "Merrie England", is a nostalgia-obsessed cultural conservative, and Bertrand probably a political one.
The Jim of the novel is in many ways a flawed character. For one who hopes to make a living by teaching history, he displays a surprising lack of enthusiasm for his subject. He drinks too much, often treats Margaret badly and can be rude and tactless. He devotes a lot of energy to pursuing feuds against those who annoy him and can be oddly childish. The character in the film is very much watered down in an attempt to make him more likeable; this attempt succeeds to some extent, but at the cost of also making him less interesting.
Maureen Connell's Margaret is less neurotic, hysterical and manipulative here than she is in the book, and as a result becomes completely forgettable. Sharon Acker's Christine is almost equally so. (Christine was English in the book but here becomes Canadian, possibly in order to make the film more marketable in North America). Those characters in the film who do stand out tend to be those who are played in the same way as they are in the novel, notably Hugh Griffith's absent-minded, evasive, pedantic and pretentious Professor Welch and Terry-Thomas's pompous, self-important, snobbish and bullying Bertrand. (Like Carmichael, however, Terry-Thomas at 46 was really too old. He was actually a year older than Griffith who plays his father).
The film is not altogether a bad one and can provide a few amusing moments. When one considers how good its source novel is, however, it really should have been a lot better. 6/10.