THIS IS IT: the way he made me feel

I must beg to differ with Dame Elizabeth Taylor's tweeted review of THIS IS IT. It is not "the single most brilliant piece of filmmaking" I have ever seen. Nor is it worthy of Oscar nominations "in every conceivable category." It is however an engrossing and entertaining tribute to Michael Jackson's incredible talent as a performer.
THIS IS IT is the show we never got to see. Culled from more than a hundred hours of video footage of the Los Angeles rehearsals earlier this year for his planned farewell show in London, it portrays Jackson as an entertainer still at the top of game despite having turning fifty and endured years of ridicule for his off-stage behaviour. Rightly or wrongly those lurid stories of his private life suddenly seem small and irrelevant when watching him on stage breathing new life into classics like "Billie Jean", "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Black or White", "Beat It" and, of course, "Thriller." It's impossible to top the John Landis directed 1983 video for the latter and wisely Jackson and show director Kenny Ortega don't try, opting instead for a reimagining which combines 3D video with live action.
Lavish though the new "Thriller" routine is, for me the highlight of THIS IS IT is "Smooth Criminal" which blends a film noir mini-movie starring Jackson alongside Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart and Edward G Robinson with punchy on-stage choreography.
Cut through all of the speculation about Jackson's motivations for his comeback and whether he was fit enough to handle the demands of a 50 show run and one thing is very clear; "This Is It" (the show) certainly wouldn't have been a cynical minimum effort maximum profit stroll through Jackson's greatest hits. THIS IS IT (the film) proves that Jackson intended it to be bigger and more spectacular than anything he'd done before and that he was completely involved in aspect of the production, and the music in particular. He's polite but demanding with the musicians as he directs them to create exactly the same sounds that he's imagining.
Much has been written since Jackson's death about the state of his health during these rehearsals with some claiming he was obviously unwell and others countering that he was in excellent health. From the evidence presented in THIS IS IT he looks thin, particularly when compared with the lithe and muscular dancers surrounding him, most of whom are 25 - 30 years younger, but he doesn't display any problems in matching them move for move. Admittedly he doesn't participate in their pirouettes and backflips but that's not his job. He sings and dances his way through numerous routines without appearing out of breath which is considerably more than most 50 year old men can manage.
It would be wrong to suggest that THIS IS IT offers irrefutable evidence that all the bad things that have been said about Jackson's final days are wrong. This is a carefully crafted tribute to a recently departed superstar by those who were working with him at the very end and who very obviously revered him. It is not a warts n'all or fly on the wall documentary. Jackson is always "on" and, consequently, there's nothing which even approaches an unguarded moment. It's not a concert movie either but rather a valuable record of a work-in-progress. It's fascinating to watch Jackson and Ortega putting together the routines and I enjoyed the opportunity to hear the songs performed live without interruption from screaming fans, and without endless shots of besotted fans waving their arms in the air and singing along.

I admit that Jackson's death in June left me largely unmoved. I liked his music and I'd been lucky enough to see him live in concert in London in 1997, but I found the outpouring of grief overblown and hysterical. People seem to have lost all sense of proportion and forgotten all the bad stuff, I thought. THIS IS IT reminded me of just how much great music he created, and in the long run, that is what we will remember when we think of Michael Jackson. 

ROPE OF SAND: ever so slightly ropey

I remember a late night three or four years ago, slumped in front of the tv, feeling too lazy to turn it off, get up and go to bed. I'd channel surfed my way to QVC where a super-smiley woman was coming to what was clearly the end of a long stint trying to flog Diamonique jewelry. Having exhausted every other reason why our life would not be complete without at least one piece of  this overpriced fake diamond tat she tried to convince us that it really was impossible to tell the 'ique' from the 'ond' because the 'ique' was made by the same craftsmen who created the 'ond'  jewelry. She explained that they'd work on the Diamonique jewelry after they'd finished polishing and setting their daily workload of diamonds. Without intending to, she painted a mental picture of craftsmen carelessly knocking out a couple of dozen diamonique necklaces in the final five minutes of their shift while they waited for the factory whistle to blow.
I was reminded of this moment while watching ROPE OF SAND, not because the object of lust was diamonds buried in the burning sands of southern Africa, but because the film is a very obvious and cut price effort to emulate the success of 'Casablanca' released six years earlier. 
It's not the story which prompts the comparisons but the cast and the settings. Bogie and Bergman are missing but her long-suffering screen husband Paul Henreid is second billed as the sadistic commandant of a private police force; the unflappably urbane Claude Rains is third billed as his urbane, cynical witticisms spouting boss, while a whiny, seedy Peter Lorre plays the appropriately named Toady. But the 'Casablanca' connections don't end there.
The film's decidedly anti-heroic hero Mike, played by Burt Lancaster, has a black sidekick called John who performs much the same kind of role as Sam did for Rick, minus the piano playing. Mike does the right thing by the heroine, Suzanne, although he insists his passion for her is not the reason why he's doing the right thing, and much of the action takes place in a very exotically dressed cafe-bar-nightclub which resembles 'Rick's Cafe Americain' in everything but name, and where the headwaiter is also called Carl.
And if all that weren't enough,  ROPE OF SAND is produced by Hal Wallis, the genius who brought all of the elements together to create the dazzling diamond that is 'Casablanca'!
So why, with so much going for it, does ROPE OF SAND turn out to be such a glaringly cheap Diamonique-dressed trinket?
Perhaps most importantly, the script has none of the subtlety, intelligence or humour of 'Casablanca.' That film beautifully articulated a moment in time when the world needed a hero like Rick Blaine who could put selfish apathy aside to do the right thing, recognising that his problems didn't amount to a hill of beans. ROPE's story is small, self-centred and unimaginatively written and, frankly there's a limit to what even actors of the calibre of Rains and Lorre can do to rescue a a weak script and direction. 

A consequence of the poor script is a pair of leading characters who are hard to care about. Lancaster's Mike Davis is handsome and athletic but not particularly likable, while Corinne Calvert in her American film debut fails to convince as the streetwise slut who discovers true love the instant she claps eyes on Davis. She has none of Bergman's allure and her character's backstory is not exactly one to elicit much sympathy.
Henreid tries his best to be a convincing bad guy but his heart's just not in it. Maybe that's because he was uncomfortable playing a character other than a suave continental lover, or perhaps it's because he was simply embarrassed at his character's many inconsistencies. 
Lorre is completely wasted in a nonsensical part which is completely superfluous to the story. He may have had an even smaller role in 'Casablanca' but that was an essential one. Without Ugarte's theft of the letters of transit Rick would never have had an opportunity to discover just how noble he could be. 
Ultimately though, the blame lies not with the cast, director or the scriptwriter, but with the producer, Hal Wallis. By 1949 he was a very powerful man in Hollywood with the power to choose his own projects and cast them. He oversaw every aspect of the film's production and he blew it. He was the master crafter of diamond jewelry who thought he could fob us off with a piece of QVC diamonique. 

JIMMY THE GENT: more plot than there's space for

JIMMY THE GENT left me dazed and more than a little confused. Director Michael Curtiz packs more plot into the film's 67 minute running time than I could keep up with. Breakneck hardly begins to describe the pace at which this story moves.
As best as I could understand it, James Cagney is a geneologist (yes, a geneologist!) who earns his living by "finding" the heirs to industrialists, playboys and other assorted super-rich who've died without leaving a will. His main rival is the upright and erudite Charles Wallingham (Alan Dinehart) who also tracks down surviving relatives, but does it the honest way. His second in command is Joan Martin, played by Bette Davis, who used to work for Cagney and still has a secret crush on him  although she'll slap your face and call you a liar if you're to suggest such a thing. 
Now I know that genealogist is not the first occupation that comes to mind when thinking of James Cagney but the good news is that the profession has been adapted to fit his screen persona, rather than the other way around. Cagney plays the part just like he would a newspaper journalist, bookmaker, Broadway show producer, or gangster. Genealogy is just  another racket and Cagney makes no concessions to the part in his acting. If anything he's more manic than usual, bellowing away at his employees, conjuring up at least a hundred different angles to every situation, and stomping around with that stiff-legged strut so beloved by impersonators every since. The whole performance is topped off by a truly bizarre haircut more at home on the head of a World War One-era Prussian officer.
Davis by contrast had yet to make the jump from Warner Bros A-list contract player to bona fide film star replete with her own collection of highly imitatable mannerisms. Here, in the third of six films she was to make for the studio in 1934, she's a heavily made-up peroxide blonde in a part that could just as easily have been played by Joan Blondell or Ginger Rogers.
JIMMY THE GENT is by no means a classic, but it is a fine example of the kind of product that rolled off the Warner Brothers production line at the rate of almost one a week during the period when Hollywood fully lived up to both words in the descriptor "dream factory."

VILLAIN: dis geezer is an' all big fer da part. Know what I mean?

Gor blimey! What would Lizzie say? Richard Burton's playing a Julian Ray - a bit of a Perry Como - a baahmeville sailor, a bale of hay. Kna wot I'm sayin!
Ok so I'm not a native speaker of Cockney but neither is Richard Burton and it hampers his performance in this gritty, British made gangster thriller from 1971. Burton had a beautiful speaking voice and it keeps breaking through as he struggles to sound convincing as East End gangland boss Vic Dakin.

Loosely modelled on real-life London gangster Ronnie Kray, Dakin is a psychotic sadist and closet homosexual whose idea of foreplay is punching lover Ian McShane in the gut. Dakin's also devoted to his mostly bedridden old mum (Cathleen Nesbitt) dutifully bringing her a cup of tea and the Sunday paper after returning from slicing up an informer with a cut-throat razor.
While it's interesting to watch Burton trying something different, his superstar persona overwhelms what is essentially a small scale, low budget project.  By 1971 there was so much extravagant baggage attached to him that it can't be contained by a character like Dakin. Burton tries his best but he's just too big for the part.
It's to the credit of the supporting cast that Burton's miscasting doesn't sink the film. McShane is cool and understated as the quintessential ducker and diver, doing whatever it takes to survive, while Nigel Davenport and a very young Colin Welland succeed in avoiding the cliches as the coppers focused on bringing Dakin down. 
VILLAIN is a movie that's hard to find but it's worth seeking it out because it's a fascinating example of how a really big film star can become boxed in by his own legend.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY - a love that passeth all understanding

Michael Moore's latest assault on the establishment isn't going to win him any new friends. His expose of how the cosy relationship between politicians and big financial institutions (Goldman Sachs in particular) lead to last year's meltdown on Wall Street willl reinforce the opinion of those who paint him as an anti-American muckraker. He doesn't pussyfoot around in blaming deregulated capitalism for the recession which has cost millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands of Americans their homes.
CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY certainly made my blood boil, but not for the same reasons that enrage the Dittoheads. Moore cuts through the almost impenetrable thicket that is the modern financial market to spell out in very simple terms how the American dream was hijacked by a few big institutions to benefit themselves at considerable expense to the rest of us.
He explains how the belief that hard work will be rewarded with financial and material success has been corrupted by capitalism into naked greed, encouraging millions to live beyond their means with easy credit and loans, the terms for which almost no ordinary person could understand. While the carrot of wealth was dangled in front of us - seemingly attainable but in reality always just out of reach - a few people did get rich quick, and they were the creators of these complicated financial instruments. When their creations finally careered out of control in the fall of 2008 and, like Frankenstein's Monster, destroyed the castles of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns et al, the Barons of these ruined establishments escaped with not just their lives but also a huge stash of loot. It was us ordinary folk who were the real victims.
While Moore is rightly angry at this state of affairs he hasn't lost his sense of humour. This film will make you laugh and seethe, unless of course you're someone who still believes the sun shone out of Reagan's wrinkly rear end in which case you'll simply spit blood at Moore's effrontery in criticising St Ron and his Gospel of Trickle Down Economics.
I'll admit I was a little wary about parting with cash to see this film. Economics was never my strong point in school and - let's be honest - the subject does have the potential to be considerably duller than dishwater. But Moore has created a film which not only got my dander up but which also held me almost spellbound until the absolute end. Whatever your political persuasion CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY will not leave you unmoved.

ANNA KARENINA: Garbo schmarbo!

In all my decades of movie-buffdom I've somehow managed to see a grand total of one Greta Garbo film. I've read acres of copy about her and enjoyed those stories of her being stalked by paparazzi on the sidewalks of Manhattan during her declining years but I've never felt the urge to actually see her in action.
It's a state of affairs I felt I really should rectify so tonight I sat down to watch her 1935 effort ANNA KARENINA. I expected to be dazzled by her beauty and beguiled by her goddess-like aura, but I wasn't. Garbo distinctly underwhelmed me. She was neither an ethereal beauty nor a magnetic screen presence. She came across as just another well dressed, overly made-up MGM leading lady of the 1930s.
The film itself is a lavish visual spectacle. The sets are sumptuous, the costumes beautiful and the camerawork creative. Early on, during a banquet scene, director Clarence Brown draws his camera down the middle of an incredibly long table laden with food. Candelabra swish by on either side as the camera travels backwards seemingly forever. The shot is spectacular yet so subtle that it takes a moment to recognise just how impressive it is.
The cast is star-studded, as one would expect of a prestige MGM production. Basil Rathbone is malevolently magnificent as Anna's manipulative husband, May Robson fusses and clucks as Vronsky's mother, and Fredric March is suitably dashing, if a little dull, as Vronsky.
I've never read Tolstoy's novel but it's clear from the way in which the film's ending suddenly arrives that the original text has been severely compressed, presumably to cut out the "boring bits." Sure enough, a quick check on Amazon.com reveals the novel to be a weighty 830 plus pages long, while the film clocks in at just 90 minutes.
ANNA KARENINA is not really my kind of movie. It's too worthy and too lavish for my taste, but at least I can now say, should anyone care to ask, that I've seen two Garbo films, and maybe in a decade or so I'll be ready for a third.

AMELIE: picture perfect entertainment

It's not too often that I get a warm glow of enjoyment while watching a film these days, but the atmosphere on my couch grew positively tropical as AMELIE played out, and chances are you’ll experience exactly the same sensation.

This French film has restored my faith in cinema to produce films that are heartwarming without being mushily sentimental, funny without resorting to slapstick comedy, and entertaining without the need for car chases, sex scenes, explosions or punch ups.

Over-protected by her cold and distant parents, AMELIE has led a sheltered existence, working as a waitress in a café in the Montmatre district of Paris, and living in her own fantasy world.

Then she finds a 40 year old tin box containing a schoolboy’s long forgotten toys. She tracks down the now middle aged owner, and discovers her true vocation – solving other people’s problems and helping them to find love and happiness.

AMELIE’s world is peopled by ordinary folk with fascinating quirks. They’re all entirely believable, but also funny without realising it.There’s the hypochondriac tobacconist, the intolerant greengrocer, and the solitary young man who collects discarded pictures from passport photo booths, and it’s their lives that give this film so much of its charm.We become AMELIE's co-conspirator as she moves among them, invisibly sorting out their problems and punishing their transgressions.

Audrey Tautou is just fantastic in the title role, conveying a beguiling mix of innocence, craftiness, and steely determination to do the right thing, until it comes to her own love life.

Flora Guiet, who plays the 8 year old Amelie, is also superb, acting her white ankle socks off while making it look like the most natural thing in the world.

The other star of this film is Paris. Set mostly in 1997, but drenched in 50s style Technicolor, the city looks so picture-book beautiful, it’ll have you firing up your laptop as the final credits roll to book a long weekend there.

Words like charming, delightful, and life-affirming are so rarely used to describe films these days that they seem rather old fashioned, but they describe AMELIE perfectly.

If you’re looking for an extremely good time and a warm glow of deep satisfaction, spend a couple of hours in the company of this young lady. I guarantee you won’t regret it.

OLD ACQUAINTANCE: a scenery chewing spectacular!

There weren't many actresses who could hold their own against Bette Davis but Miriam Hopkins was one of them.
Miriam who?
She was the Faye Dunaway of the 1930s appearing in a number of critical and box office successes ("Trouble in Paradise", "These Three", "The Old Maid") before fading from sight and memory. OLD ACQUAINTANCE, released in 1943, was Hopkins final film as a big star and she certainly went out in style.
She and Davis had worked together four years earlier in "THE OLD MAID" during which Davis had an affair with Hopkins husband, so there was little love lost between the two of them by the time Warner Bros reunited them for this overheated melodrama.
Knowing this backstory makes watching the film an even more pleasurable experience. Here are two big, temperamental stars, both accustomed to being queen of their domain, and with a history of mutual dislike, being asked to play a couple of lifelong friends who fall out over men and success.
Davis was the bigger star by 1943 but Hopkins refuses to yield. Where Davis is content to chew at the scenery Hopkins rips out large chunks and swallows them whole. To counter the by now familiar Davis mannerisms - the clipped speech, the vigorous sucking on cigarettes etc - all of which are on display here, Hopkins resorts to the sort of histrionics for which the word overacting is an inadequate descriptor.
Faced with two such forces of nature it's not surprising that the men in the story come off like potted plants. Both John Loder and Gig Young are so dull and colorless that it's difficult to understand how they avoid getting simply chewed up and spat out. 
To the best of my recollection OLD ACQUAINTANCE was the first Hollywood film to deliberately cast two such mutually antagonistic stars in order to record the sparks that would inevitably fly. Their barely masked on-screen contempt for each other would not be seen again until Davis was pitted against arch rival Joan Crawford almost twenty years later in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" The acidic bitchy energy generated by their rivalry contributed greatly to "Baby Jane's" status as a cult classic. OLD ACQUAINTANCE deserves similar consideration.

ACROSS THE PACIFIC: Bogart begins to bloom

First released in 1942, ACROSS THE PACIFIC is a fascinating film because it portrays a superstar in the making – not yet fully formed but about to blossom from a caterpillar into a butterfly.

With "The Maltese Falcon" the previous year, Humphrey Bogart demonstrated he had the star quality to carry a film. His rather slapdash performance here indicates that confidence had possibly gone to his head a little (or maybe more accurately to the heads of Warner Bros who controlled Bogie's career), but by the time he made "Casablanca" (immediately after PACIFIC) all the components were in place to create the legend he became.

Set in November 1941, ACROSS THE PACIFIC sees him playing disgraced US Army officer Rick Leland. Dishonorably discharged from the service, he boards a Japanese freighter bound for the Orient, hoping to start a new life.

The only other passengers are his "Maltese Falcon" co-stars Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet.  and Dr Lorenz.

Astor is Alberta Marlow,  a breathless and excitable department store worker from Medicine Hat, Canada, taking her first big vacation. Greenstreet is Dr Lorenz, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Manila. He’s also a vocal admirer of the Japanese at a time when the Empire of the Rising Sun is edging towards war with the United States.

Rick wastes little time in romancing Alberta, while also making plain to Dr Lorenz his disillusionment with America.

It gives nothing away to reveal that this is a story about espionage and romance, themes that Warner Brothers were to blend time and time again during the early1940s. ACROSS THE PACIFIC is an enjoyable, but not classic example of the genre.

Bogart’s Rick Leland lacks the depth to make him a fully rounded character. After the progress he made the previous year with "The Maltese Falcon" and "High Sierra", Leland is a disappointing throwback to the one dimensional roles he’d been typecast in since the mid 30s.

Bogart rushes from one incident to the next without ever really convincing us he’s doing more than playing a part, while his rapid romancing of Astor comes across as a horny teenager who’s inexplicably got lucky.

His womanising as Sam Spade in "The Maltese Falcon" was credible in the context of the character. Here it isn’t.

Astor played the femme fatale in Falcon, and again portrays a woman who’s clearly not as naïve as she would have everyone believe. Marlow is a class turn, trading sexual banter with Leland within minutes of their first meeting. It's these barely disguised sexual double entendres which give this story its spark. They’re genuinely witty, which makes it more surprising that she’s also so compliant at yielding to Leland’s desires.

Dr Lorenz is a variation on Greenstreet's Kasper Gutman in "Falcon", malevolent, deceptive and ruthless, but lacking the depth he brought to his screen debut.

The overall impression is of a talented cast and director (John Huston) having fun with an undistinguished script.

If Warner Brothers had stuck with their plans to cast Ronald Reagan instead of Bogart in the lead role in "Casablanca" ACROSS THE PACIFIC would have sunk without trace decades ago. Thankfully they came to their senses and PACIFIC assumed an important place in Bogart’s rise from actor to superstar. An interesting and entertaining minor thriller, the film's serves to increase our appreciation of the films Bogart made immediately before and after it.

LONELYHEARTS: more hot air than the Hindenburg

What a cast! - Montgomery Clift, Myrna Loy and Robert Ryan - and what a drag! LONELYHEARTS (1958) is so overloaded with grandiloquent, mind-numbingly boring dialogue that it's a real struggle to stay awake for more than twenty minutes at a stretch.
This who-cares? tale of Adam White, an ambitious young journalist whose youthfully innocent (Adam = first man, White = pure, get it?) aspirations are shattered by the cynical reality of his first bigtime newspaper job is a totally yawnfest. It pained me to see three such talented actors drowning in a sea of overly wordy metaphors, allusions and similes. They talk like characters in a really badly written stage play with pretensions to serious "adult" drama (sample; "Has anyone ever tried to figure out how many tears you cry in a lifetime?")
The worst offender is Ryan's verbally vicious newspaper editor. Not once does he actually say what he means, preferring instead to blather on like a man who's swallowed not only a dictionary but also "The Dummy's Guide to Philosophy." No wonder his wife (Loy) has become an alcoholic.
Clift is miscast as the reluctant "Miss Lonelyheart" agony-aunt/uncle columnist. He's wide-eyed enough (possibly the result of the plastic surgery on his face after a bad car smash 18 months earlier) but too old for the part, and his constant twitching is distracting. Presumably Clift's intent is to convey his character's discomfort in his own skin but it comes across like some kind of musclar control disorder.
Windy and pretentious in the extreme,  screenwriter and producer Dore Schary may have believed he was creating high art but the result is totally arse.

ZOMBIELAND: they're dead and Woody's loving it

Ruben Fleischer's directorial debut is a reasonably satisfying blend of "Shaun of the Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead" with a smidgin of John Hughes-esque coming of age angst thrown in for good measure.
ZOMBIELAND's rather thin storyline isn't going to win any wards for originality but it is fun in a very undemanding kind of way. Jesse Eisenberg plays Columbus, a geeky, virginal, neurotic loner in his early 20s whose hermit-like existence has contributed to his surviving a virus which has turned the human race into flesh eating zombies.
Fate throws him together with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a gun-totin' "bring 'em on" kind of tough guy who just loves killing the undead. Heading east from California they team up with a couple of crafty sisters, Witchita (Emma Stone) and the younger Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). The presence of female company - and Witchita in particular - gives Columbus a belated opportunity to discover his inner hero and start acting like a man.
It's something Eisenberg should be a pro at by now, having already experienced this particular rite of passage in "Adventureland." I'm not sure if there's any significance in this but theme parks provide the backdrop for his transition from boy to man in both films, although in the former he has the luxury of wrestling solely with his own insecurities uninterrupted by the living dead.
Part horror, part roadtrip and mostly comedy, the film's weak point is it's lack of focus. There's too many sub themes and subplots (Harrelson's quest for a Twinkie, for example) which kill some time but don't really go anywhere worthwhile. There's a sense of certain lines being spoken and certain events taking place solely to provide a quick laugh rather than develop the storyline. The film's biggest "what-was-that-all-about?" moment comes when the gang encounters a real life movie star, playing himself, hiding out in his palatial Beverly Hills mansion. 
For me the biggest downside to ZOMBIELAND is Woody Harrelson. I just don't like looking at him or listening to him. His thin high pitched voice and the way his jaw makes his lower lip stick out further than his upper lip makes me feel somehow unclean. 
Irrational I know but I can't help it and I've just got to learn to live with it.

THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT: a window on a bygone age

With its semi-serious peek into the brave new world of industrial innovation, director Alexander Mackendrick's 1951 drama THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT succeeds in being both optimistic and fearful about the future.

Set in an unnamed town in the heart of Britain's now vanished textile industry, the film stars Alec Guinness as mild mannered scientist Sidney Stratton, inventor of a fabric that never gets dirty and never wears out. His employer, mill owner Alan Birnley (Cecil Parker) is initially ecstatic. Sidney's invention will make every other fabric obsolete and release millions from the drudgery of washing and ironing. 

But Birnley's competitors and employees realise the fabric will destroy their industry and their livelihood and team up in an increasingly desperate attempt to smother Sidney's creation at birth.

THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT is a window on a way of life which existed just 60 years ago but now seems like 160 years ago. It's a world where people ended their sentences with "I'm sure," and used expressions like "You're talking through your hat." While some of the more radical workers talked about fighting for their rights they also knew their place in the class structure, which was just as well seeing as their employers had no interest in giving them a meaningful say in the running of their industry.

The film presents Sidney as hopelessly naive and altruistic while almost everyone else around him is focused on their own narrow self interests. But, viewed from today's perspective it's clear that those resisting his invention are equally naive. The mill owners confidence that they can control the future of their industry by force of their personality, and the workers' belief that they'll safeguard their jobs by destroying Sidney's invention is totally misplaced.

THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT was the fourth of five Ealing Comedies that Guinness was to make for the famous British studio between 1949 and 1955 and it's easily the slightest of the quintet. His character is shy and retiring to the point of fading into the wallpaper, and he's overshadowed by considerably more interesting and enjoyable performances from Parker and a magnificently wheezy Ernest Thesiger. Interesting but definitely not essential viewing.