The Moviegoer

Some simple and quietly careful acting and a great deal of perceptive photography combine to make the Copley's latest English import a good movie. An improbable and often mawkish story keeps it far from being a great one.

"Chance of a Lifetime's" chance comes when an English factory owner, tired of incessant labor disputes, offers to turn his plant over to its workers. The workers grab the chance, production soars, and the factory runs along with enthusiastic efficiency. But the workers are no managers, a complicated contract turns up, and they finally have to reactivate their old boss to help them out. It takes some remarkably restrained acting to keep the plot from soaking the moviegoer with a flood of melodrama.

Basil Radford holds up the movie's toughest part as the obliging boss; he is supported by a fine east, much of it drawn from the Old Vie and movies like "Quartet" and "Tight Little Island." Excellent camera work helps the acting out. "Chance of a Lifetime's" camera looks with interest and care into the mechanical clutter of a modern factory.

"Chance of a Lifetime" manages to come out squarely for both management and labor--no mean accomplishment--it does so by sacrificing most of the force of its not particularly forceful story. But it is a good, sometimes almost documentary, study of industry and its people.