input: THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT, like I'M ALL RIGHT JACK, takes a dim view of both labor and capital. Alec Guinness is a scientific genius - but an eccentric one (he has never gotten his university degree due to an...err...accident in a college laboratory). He manages to push himself into various industrial labs in the textile industry. When the film begins he is in Michael Gough's company, and Gough (in a memorable moment) is trying to impress his would-be father-in-law (Cecil Parker) by showing him the ship-shape firm he runs. While having lunch with Parker and Parker's daughter (Joan Greenwood), Gough gets a message regarding some problems about the lab's unexpectedly large budget problems. He reads the huge expenditures (due to Guinness's experiments), and chokes on his coffee.

Guinness goes on to work at Parker's firm, and repeats the same tricks he did with Gough - but Parker discovers it too. Greenwood has discovered what Guinness is working on, and convinces Parker to continue the experiments (but now legally). The result: Guinness and his assistant has apparently figured out how to make an artificial fiber that can constantly change the electronic bonds within it's molecular structure so that (for all intents and purposes) the fiber will remain in tact for good. Any textile made from it will never fade, get dirty, or wear out - it will last forever.

Guinness has support from a female shop steward, but not her chief. He sees Guinness as selling out to the rich. But when he explains to them what he's done, they turn against him. If everyone has clothes that will last forever then they will not need new clothes! Soon Parkers' fellow textile tycoons (led by Gough, Ernest Theisinger - in a wonderful performance, and Howard Marion-Crawford) are equally panic stricken by what may end their businesses. They seek to suppress the invention. With only Greenwood in his corner (although Parker sort of sympathizes with him), Guinness tries to get the news of his discovery to the public.

In the end, Guinness is defeated by science as well as greed. But he ends the film seeing the error in his calculations, and we guess that one day he may still pull off his discovery after all.

It's a brilliant comedy. But is the argument for suppression valid? At one point the difficulties of making the textile are shown (you have to heat the threads to a high temperature to actually enable the ends of the material to be united. There is nothing that shows the cloth will stretch if the owner gets fat (or contract if the owner gets thin). Are we to believe that people only would want one set of clothing for ever? What happened to fashion changes and new styles? And the cloth is only made in the color white (making Guinness look like a white knight). We are told that color dye would have to be added earlier in the process. Wouldn't that have an effect on the chemical reactions that maintain the structure of the textile?

Alas this is not a science paper, but a film about the hypocrisies of labor and capital in modern industry. As such it is brilliant. But those questions I mention keep bothering me about the validity of suppressing Guinness' invention

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: This is a cleaver film featuring love through the ages. The film consists of Keaton seeking out a lady love in the stone age, in ancient Rome and in the present (1920s). In all three cases, he is the usual wimpy Buster and he battles against Wallace Beery for his lady love. Of the three time periods, I think I liked the Roman one best even though I admit it might have also been the cheesiest. I actually liked the scenes with the lion that was obviously a guy in a costume as well as the weird chariot race in the snow--but what I really enjoyed the most was seeing all of Keaton's amazing acrobatics. However, all three time periods were good old fashioned fun and the film, while not his best, is still an exceptional and enjoyable film. Check it out!

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: This was another obscure Christmas-related title, a low-budget Mexican production from exploitation film-maker Cardona (NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES [1969], TINTORERA! [1977]), which like many a genre effort from this country was acquired for release in the U.S. by K. Gordon Murray. Judging by those two efforts already mentioned, Cardona was no visionary and, this one having already received its share of flak over here, is certainly no better! The film, in fact, is quite redolent of the weirdness which characterized Mexican horror outings from the era, but given an added dimension by virtue of the garish color (which, in view of the prominence of reds apart from St. Nick himself, the Devil plays a major role in the proceedings throughout, was essential). Anyway, in a nutshell, the plot involves Satan's efforts to stall Santa Claus' Christmas Eve rendezvous with the Earth's children; there is, however, plenty more wackiness along the way: to begin with, our portly, white-bearded and chronically merry man-in-red lives in a celestial palace who, apart from accompanying toy-maker kids from all over the world on his piano as they sing (laboriously for the whole first reel!) in their native tongue, visits Merlin the famed magician at King Arthur's court, here bafflingly but amusingly prone to child-like hopping and mumbling gibberish! once every year to acquire potions which would bring somnolence to the young and render himself invisible (by the way, the Wizard's anachronistic presence here is no less unlikely than his being a cohort of Dr. Frankenstein in SON OF Dracula [1974]!!); incidentally, by this time, he always seems to have gained some excess weightso Santa has to work out in order to be able to fit into each proverbial chimney! The Devil's antics (enthusiastically rubbing his hands together at every turn and generally hamming it up) to hold up St. Nick's delivery program, then, is perfectly puerile: indeed, their tit-for-tat shenanigans resemble an old Laurel & Hardy routine more than anything! To pad out the running-time, we focus on three sets of children: one, the lonely son of a rich couple who wants nothing more for Christmas than their company (projected as a wish-fulfillment fantasy where the boy finds his parents wrapped in extra-large packages!), a girl from a poor family who yearns to own a doll of her own (the horned one first tempts her to steal one, then invades the little one's dreams to no avail) and a trio of brats who, egged on once again by Satan, think of nothing but causing mischief and eventually fall out amongst themselves. There is definitely imagination at work here, but it is applied with little rhyme or reason, while the overall juvenile approach keeps entertainment (unless one counts the film as a guilty pleasure) well at bay!

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: It's not my fault. My girlfriend made me watch it.

There is nothing positive to say about this film. There has been for many years an idea that Madonna could act but she can't. There has been an idea for years that Guy Ritchie is a great director but he is only middling. An embarrassment all round.

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pos/neg ans:
negative