AllMovie

Filmed on location in a British industrial town, Chance of a Lifetime is a trenchantly amusing satire of labor-management relations. When a group of angry workers protest their wage and working conditions at a plough factory, they are permitted to take over the operation themselves. It isn't long before they realize that you can't run a business on idealism and goodwill. Wisely, no one in the film is depicted as a clear-cut hero or villain; "hateful" company boss Dickinson (Basil Radford) is just as human and likeable as the incensed workers. For reasons that now seem frivolous, Chance of a Lifetime was rejected by three major British distribution firms before it was picked up--at the behest of the government--by British Lion.