What a shock to the British system the satire “The Admirable Crichton” must have been when it premiered on stage in 1902.

Written by J.M. Barrie, the Scottish novelist and playwright who had himself quite a year in 1902 — producing “Crichton” for the stage and introducing “Peter Pan” in a novel that he’d turn into a play two years later — it had a hint of 19th and 20th century boogeyman Karl Marx in its class-upending story of a “Downton” era English servant, shipwrecked with his master’s family on a desert island and proving himself not only their equal, but their superior in every way in terms of social usefulness, intelligence, humility and compassion.

The very idea! A man in “service” showing enterprise, intelligence, natural “leadership” and useful life skills in the face of the dead weight nobility and inherited wealth?

You can get a taste of that original jolt in director Lewis Gilbert’s fine 1957 film adaptation of “Crichton,” which made the perfect vehicle for Stiff Upper Lip star Kenneth More. He so embodied the character’s ever-so-polite/ever-so-English way that the argument that maybe this “class” thing they were so obsessed with was reaching its overdue end in the wake of the trauma and social upheaval that followed World War II seemed ever-so-reasonable coming from him.

In the film, Crichton is the fastidious, class-conscious/class-enforcing butler at Loam Hall, a great house in the National Trust mold, in the employ of the widowed Lord Loam (Cecil Parker), a liberal intent on teaching his three spoiled and beautiful daughters ( Sally Ann Howes, Mercy Haystead and Miranda Connell) a lesson in “equality.”

It’s 1905, and the suffragette movement is all the rage. But in Loam Hall, the young ladies are being lectured that “no one (is) better than anyone else” by their father. He even takes that so far as to throw a household staff and nobility mixer, a “tea,” whish aside from making more work and lots of awkwardness for the servants who have to make it work and make small talk with their “betters,” it will almost certainly wreck oldest daughter Lady Mary’s plans to announce her engagement to the stiff Earl of Brocklehurst (the English actor Peter Graves).

But as in the later “Downton Abbey,” this Lady Mary has a confidante on the household staff. Crichton is just as apalled at this “equality” exercise.

“I’m ashamed to be seen speaking to you, my lady”

He may get an ironic “You’ll do what you’re TOLD” from his lordhsip, but he does what he can to insulate Mary from the disapproval of her fiance’s very conservative mother (Martita Hunt).

But he’s not there to intervene when a more headstrong younger daughter Agatha (Connell) is arrested in a suffragette dustup in London. There’s nothing for it but to suggest a sojourn at sea for the family, “yachting” away from the scandal in the South Seas in their steamboat Bluebelle.

Crichton is dragged along, with his affectionate special project, cockney maid Eliza, played by Diane Cilento. They’ll ensure the lord and his ladies are kept in comfort as they weather the storm of “scandal.”

The ship sinking in a real storm is another matter. And when they’re cast ashore, the intrepid Crichton simply cannot protect Lord Loam, his daughters, the Reverand Treherne (Jack Walting) and Agatha’s snobby suitor Ernest (Gerald Harper) from the slow realization that they can’t “order” and “class” their way out of this, and in point of fact, that they’re lazy and useless drains on society to a one.

The film, an expansion of the play in terms of settings and added characters, is memorable for its gently-underscored radical politics — when Italian filmmaker Lina Wertmüller used the story as inspiration for her 1974 classic “Swept Away,” she made the protagonist a communist who exercises sexual dominance over an overwhelmed upper class woman — and its wit.

Crichton gets one and all off the yacht in the storm, awakening his lordship, who is nothing if not irked.

“This is a FINE time of night to be shipwrecked!”

Crichton saves Eliza from the sinking yacht and gets her and himself on board, only to be told that he should be on the “staff” lifeboat.

“Shall I withdraw, sir?”

On sighting land, he is informed that this isn’t necessarily good news.

“But we can’t go ASHORE like this!” the under-dressed ladies huff.

The story’s so familiar — even “Gilligan’s Island” leaned on it — that you can guess the rest. Crichton, born to “service” and appreciated at home by his betters as a man who “knows everything,” sets about keeping them alive and reluctantly establishing a new “natural” order — competence and enterprise and usefulness over “class.”

And he finds himself pursed by Eliza and Mary and even others as “the Guv’nor,” the boss of this situation, builder of huts, maker of fire, provider of wild boar and deer dinners.

The film provides a template for all the “Upstairs/Downstairs””Gosford Park/Downton Abbey” tales to follow. The class system is exposed not only for its upward-mobility-inhibiting nobles. The servants themselves mimic this via their own “valet” vs. “coachman” and “cook” heirarchy.

“Crichton” is a film of soundstages — some very fine storm-at-sea “tank” work — and Bermuda locations that serve up a few too many freshly-planted palm trees, if we’re honest.

And the film’s 1950s British context gives it a muzzled feeling, with a finale that has a whiff of “lost our nerve, Guv’nor” about it. It’s a tad dated, but the performances, the dialogue and the Technicolor production values — freshly-planted-palms aside — make it timeless.

This is the gold standard of a story that’s been filmed four times, a movie that still lands its droll laughs well over 100 years after the play was written, still finds the fun in the idea that the people who think themselves superior simply aren’t.

“Crichton’s” very British title was changed to “Paradise Lagoon” when it played in the U.S. It was so popular in the U.K. that More was summoned to star in a West End musical version that flopped in 1964.

There’s a funny lump of trivia that connects this film to the James Bond franchise. Not only did writer-director Lewis Gilbert go on to direct classics such as “Alfie” and “Educating Rita,” he was behind the camera for “You Only Live Twice” with Sean Connery as Bond, the best of the Roger Moore Bond pics “The Spy Who Loved Me” and the ruinously-expensive “Moonraker.”

John Glen, a sound editor on “Crichton,” was Gilbert’s successor as James Bond’s “house” director, helming “For Your Eyes Only” and “The Living Daylights” — lesser Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton titles in the long-running series.

And Cilento, the Aussie actress who had major roles in “The Wicker Man” and “Tom Jones” and who does such a fine job of being Cockney and “vulgar” in “Crichton,” was Sean Connery’s first wife.

More, a World War II veteran (Royal Navy) was already well on his way to embodying that World War II “keep calm and carry on” droll British unflappability on the screen. He’d bring it to such WWII films as “Sink the Bismarck!” and “The Longest Day.” And he was named a Commander of the British Empire for his long career on stage and screen.

Looking back on it all, one can consider More’s near perfect turn as the witty and “admirable” Crichton his finest hour.

Rating: TV-14

Cast: Kenneth More, Diane Cilento, Cecil Parker, Sally Ann Howes, Jack Watling, Gerald Harper, Miranda Connell, Mercy Haystead and Martita Hunt

Credits: Scripted and directed by Lewis Gilbert, based on the J.M. Barrie play. A Columbia release on Tubi, Amazon and Youtube, etc.

Running time: 1:33