IN: Review: I admit the problem I have with the much-celebrated Ealing films I've seen so far could be mine. To my taste, either they are black and rippingly funny, or so light in tone to be unsatisfying as comedies or stories. That's a self-important way of saying I wanted to like "The Man In The White Suit" but found myself struggling to sit through its short run time.

Textile worker Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness) may be meek in manner, but he is doggedly committed to progress in the form of his attempts to invent a strand of fabric that can't be broken or made dirty. Using a factory lab for his latest experiment, he toils against limitations both material and human - the latter being the benighted mill bosses who don't understand what he is up to, then figure it out and become even more committed to stopping him.

"It's small minds like yours that stand in the way of progress," Sidney complains, practicing in the mirror what he struggles to say to the Man.

One problem with "Man In The White Suit" is that Sidney's vision of progress is awfully small-minded, too, more so even than that of the bosses or the laborers who also resent his work. My problem is more elemental: For a comedy, "White Suit" is not funny. It's a rather earnest script which too often tries to mine its feeble attempts at humor from spit-takes, double-takes, triple-takes, and dizzy takes.

The best joke is the sound of the machine Sidney toils at, going "Bleep-Blop-Bleep-Bop" endlessly and fetching queer looks from every visitor until Sidney either extracts his miracle from it or blows it up trying. Like every other bit of stray humor that functions decently in this film, it's leaned on too long.

I've never seen Guinness less affecting in a movie, even though he looks impossibly young and earnest (though actually in his mid-30s). He seems so bloodless, even more so than the wax-faced general he played in "Doctor Zhivago" He's the same cold fish whether he's ignoring the sad affections of the affecting mill girl who offers to give him her life savings when he loses his job (pan-faced Vida Hope as Bertha) or the more sultry charms of young Daphne Birnley (Joan Greenwood), his one real ally in his fight against "shabbiness and dirt", as she puts it, making those words sound as impossibly sexy as only Greenwood could.

Supporting players make "White Suit" work as well as it does. Ernest Thesinger of "Bride Of Frankenstein" fame plays a singularly nasty captain of industry who looks like Nosferatu and makes a laugh like a death rattle. Howard Marion-Crawford as another factory leader is as memorable here as he was playing a blinkered medical officer in "Lawrence Of Arabia". Then there's the undeniable charm of Mandy Miller as a little girl who steals her few moments on camera right from under everyone else.

But most of the scenes are played so straight that one wouldn't think director Alexander Mackendrick had ever worked on a comedy before (his previous Ealing comedy "Whisky Galore" doesn't reverse that impression, alas). Roger MacDougall's play posits the notion of scientific progress as potential disaster, but fails to present dull Sidney in anything other than the most blandly pleasant of lights.

Ealing comedies are remembered for capturing the human side of comedy. Yet the Ealings I've seen never seem to do this, working only when they play aggressively against our own sympathies. "Kind Hearts And Coronets" and "The Ladykillers" (Mackendrick again, go figure) are classics this way. "White Suit", on the other hand, is a pointless ramble that falls apart when it should cohere, just like that unfortunate suit.
What is this review like?
OUT: negative

IN: Review: This was fun to watch, spookily atmospheric and effects were pretty good considering they were bang in the middle of World War Two. The plot did unravel pretty quickly at the end with the villains getting their comeuppance.

It must have been a good one to watch at the local flea pit in the 1940's when they were facing the biggest threat to their liberty from the Nazis - well made with quite a serious message about the dangers to Britain from third columnists.

But Arthur Askey was so annoying & unfunny you just wanted him to shut up - well at least I did ! I suppose different tastes in different times but the clowning around became tiresome. If he was playing an annoying little man as part of the script then he succeeded.

A good watch and quite short at just over 80 minutes - a good background for older kids too so they have an idea of what train travel in austere times was like; uncomfortable slow, dirty trains, being thrown off for no reason, surly staff ....
What is this review like?
OUT: positive

IN: Review: I only saw IPHIGENIA once, almost 30 years ago, but it has haunted me since.

One sequence particularly stays in mind, and could only have been fashioned by a great director, as Michael Cacoyanis undoubtedly is.

The context: the weight of history and a mighty army and fleet all lie on King Agamemnon's shoulders. An act of sacrilege has becalmed the seas, endangering his great expedition to Troy. He is told he must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to Apollo in order to gain the winds for the sails of the Thousand Ships. He initially resists, but comes around, and tricks his wife Clytemenstra to bring their daughter to the Greek camp in order to marry the greatest of all warriors, Achilles.

Clytemnestra and Iphigenia arrive, find out about the sacrifice, and rage to the gods for protection and vengeance. Meanwhile, the proud Achilles discovers that his name has been used in this fraudulent, dishonorable way. He climbs a hill to tell Iphigenia that he will protect her.

The shot: The camera circles the two young people, without looking directly at each other. They bemoan their fate, and the weakness of men that deceive their loved ones and lust for war. Suddenly, they gaze at each other and, for one moment, we feel both their power and beauty, and the unstated--except by the camera--irony that in another time, another place, they perhaps could love each other and be married. It is a sharp and sad epiphany that lasts only for an instant.

What direction! What camera! What storytelling!
What is this review like?
OUT:
positive