In I’m All Right Jack (1959), Peter Sellers played Fred Kite, the earnest and easily flustered shop steward at a factory where management, unions and workers all pursue their own interests. It is a performance built on bluster and vulnerability in equal measure, and it announced Sellers as a film actor of the first rank.
Directed by John Boulting, the comedy follows a young man, played by Ian Carmichael, who takes a factory job and unsettles everyone around him. Sellers won the BAFTA award for Best British Actor for his work as Kite, a man whose principles are sincere even when his tactics are muddled. The role shows Sellers at his most observant: the accent, the posture and the pauses all belong to a recognisable British type, played with affection rather than contempt.