Peggy Mount is the charwoman for developer Harry H. Corbett's office. She finds a perfectly good cigar in the trash and takes it for Robert Morley, whom she also does for. He discovers the scrap of paper Miss Mount wrapped the cigar in contains a market scheme. He takes advantage and clears five thousand pounds, then proposes to go into business with four chars from the City: they will bring the scraps of paper thrown out by the Masters of The Universe, and he will speculate accordingly in the market. There's also a subplot about Corbett tossing all the people in Miss Mount's neighborhood out -- with new housing provided -- so he can develop the area.
Although the details of how the market and development work are correct in substance, the script by Michael Pertwee and John Bignall has a lot of moving parts, and underdeveloped characters. There's social satire, business satire, making fun of unionized labor...all the bugaboos you could find in a Boulting Brothers movie, but there's a soft, gooey center to the whole thing: Corbett was born in the next street over from Miss Mount's, his mother charred for ninepence a night when she could get it, and wound up in the work house. The movie hangs together well enough while you watch it, but any subtext is lost in the clamor.
Although the details of how the market and development work are correct in substance, the script by Michael Pertwee and John Bignall has a lot of moving parts, and underdeveloped characters. There's social satire, business satire, making fun of unionized labor...all the bugaboos you could find in a Boulting Brothers movie, but there's a soft, gooey center to the whole thing: Corbett was born in the next street over from Miss Mount's, his mother charred for ninepence a night when she could get it, and wound up in the work house. The movie hangs together well enough while you watch it, but any subtext is lost in the clamor.