The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)

The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)

Cast: Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker, Michael Gough, Ernest Thesiger, Howard Marion-Crawford, Henry Morrison, Vida Hope. Screenplay: Roger MacDougall, John Dighton, Alexander Mackendrick. Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe. Art direction: Jim Morahan. Film editing: Bernard Gribble.
Music: Benjamin Frankel.

When I first saw The Man in the White Suit many years ago, I thought it was a satire on the short-sightedness of those who resist scientific and technological progress. But now, after having worked in an industry threatened with obsolescence by technology, I have much greater sympathy for the film's ostensible villains, capital and labor, who try to suppress the innovation discovered by Alec Guinness's Sidney Stratton. He develops a "miracle fabric" that repels dirt and is seemingly indestructible. At first, the idea is welcomed by textile manufacturers who hope to obliterate the competition with the product. But it doesn't take long for the manufacturers to realize that an indestructible fabric would eventually put them out of business. At the same time, the labor unions realize that it would also put them out of work. It's not hard to see the parallels to our own experiences after the revolution brought about by computer technology, but in 1951 that was nothing more than a glimmer in the eyes of the fathers of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. So be careful about what's funny today. It may be your nightmare tomorrow.

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1947)

Cedric Hardwicke and Sally Ann Howes in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

Cast: Derek Bond, Cedric Hardwicke, Bernard Miles, Sally Ann Howes, Alfred Drayton, Aubrey Woods, Stanley Holloway, Jill Balcon, Mary Merrall, Athene Seyler, Sybil Thorndike, Fay Compton, Cathleen Nesbitt, James Hayter. Screenplay: John Dighton, based on a novel by Charles Dickens. Cinematography: Gordon Dines. Art direction: Michael Relph. Film editing: Leslie Norman. Music: Lord Berners.

Forgettable and rather plodding version of the Dickens novel, kept alive only by some good actors doing their thing well.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)

Dennis Price and Joan Greenwood in Kind Hearts and Coronets

Louis D'Ascoyne Mazzini: Dennis Price
Edith D'Ascoyne: Valerie Hobson
Sibella: Joan Greenwood
Ethelred, Lord Ascoyne/Rev. Lord Henry/ Gen. Lord Rufus/Admiral Lord Horatio/Young Ascoyne/Young Henry/Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne: Alec Guinness
Louis's Mother: Audrey Fildes
The Hangman: Miles Malleson
The Prison Governor: Clive Morton
Lionel: John Penrose
Lord High Steward: Hugh Griffith

Director: Robert Hamer
Screenplay: Robert Hamer, John Dighton
Based on a novel by Roy Horniman
Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe
Art direction: William Kellner
Film editing: Peter Tanner
Costume design: Anthony Mendleson
Music: Ernest Irving

Kind Hearts and Coronets is best known for Alec Guinness's tour de force as the entire D'Ascoyne family, but that's hardly the greatest of pleasures the film affords. Dennis Price's performance as the suavely lethal Louis is as much a demonstration of how to act sophisticated comedy as one could wish, and who can resist Joan Greenwood as Sibella, especially in hats that seem to contain an entire florist's shop? It evokes her definitive Gwendolen Fairfax in Anthony Asquith's 1952 filming of The Importance of Being Earnest. In fact, Oscar Wilde's play is the essential background reference for Robert Hamer's screenplay -- it apparently also influenced the novel on which the film is based -- and you hear Wilde's voice in such lines as Mazzini's "It is so difficult to make a neat job of killing people with whom one is not on friendly terms." Hamer's staging also provides the necessary distancing from Mazzini's murders, as in the scene in which he offs Young Henry D'Ascoyne: While Mazzini is taking tea with Edith in the garden we hear a whump that neither character acknowledges as Henry's darkroom explodes with him in it. Then smoke begins to arise beyond the garden wall, and Mazzini comments that someone must be burning leaves. Not this time of year, Edith replies, and Mazzini rushes off to "investigate" what he knows has happened. Kind Hearts and Coronets seems to me the best of all the classic British comedies of the late 1940s and the 1950s.