Four Pints of Guinness: The Man In the White Suit (Dir Alexander Mackendrick, 1h 25m, 1951)

As we've already discussed in this season, Ealing's comedies are almost exclusively films about the little man standing up against the establishment; we've seen this already represented by the aristocracy in Kind Hearts and by the banking system and the police in The Lavender Hill Mob. These, though, are largely genteel affairs-the D'Ascoyne family may be fusty old callbacks to the age of Empire, but they're essentially means to an end, whilst the constabulary and banking employees of The Lavender Hill Mob are either well-meaning but faceless, or suitable foils to the little man who seeks to evade them all. Not so The Man in the White Suit, a swiping attack on the two major forces in British commerce-the factory owner and the union-in which Alec Guinness's crumpled genius scientist must contend with forces that wish to stifle and misuse his creation.

Coming in the same year (the two films were released barely two months apart, and both were nominated for screenplay Oscars) as The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit has often felt like the junior member of the duo; certainly, White Suit feels like a lower-key, more intimate film, its main setting and conceit the struggle between scientist, mill owners and union a single mill town compared to the grand-scale, globe-trotting million-dollar heists of Lavender, its scientific discovery remarkable, but only manifesting in the form of a single bright-white suit. Yet, beneath the surface, there is a focused, and often viciously satirical sensibility to the film, exploring the forward drive of industry and the men who grow wealthy off the back of the labour they exploit, the retaliation of entrenched unions, and the small man caught in the middle.

We begin, though, with a cross-section of the mill's upper management, in the form of Corland (the manager of the mill, played by the late Michael Gough), his business rival, Birnley (Cecil Parker), and his daughter, Daphne (Ealing's ever-present leading lady, Joan Greenwood), being shown round Corland's mill. Instantly, through the script by Roger MacDougall, John Dighton and director Mackendrick, that great sense of class-inequality, especially in the North of factories and entrenched power, comes to the fore, Ealing's habit of shooting all of their films in black and white giving much of the film a faintly grim edge, despite the comedic proceedings. Moreover, whilst vast amounts of money flow through the mills, it is, if anything, an even more financially unbalanced state of affairs than the London or South-East that inhabits the films we have spoken about so far this season.

It is at this point that the film introduces Guinness; Sidney, or as he is largely referred to throughout the film, Sid, is undoubtedly the most atypical of the actor's four major roles at Ealing, but is, undeniably, that great English archetype, the absent-minded, but scientifically driven boffin, writ large. He is, undeniably, though, the most guileless of Guinness's heroes, a positively charming dreamer whose idealism and sensitivity are tempered by his almost joyful obliviousness of events around him. We meet him in the laboratory, the apparatus he is using (under the noses of the mill's team, no less) as much a character, with its curious gurgling melody-that will proceed to accompany his research and brainwaves throughout the film-as he is. His work is soon uncovered, as well as his appropriation of funds from the company he works for (as a mere porter), and he is summarily dismissed, finding himself once again starting from the bottom at the rival Birnley's.

It's here that the film begins to explore, as Sidney finds himself among the manual labourers of Birnley's mill, both his dream to produce a thread that never breaks to make clothing that does not stain or wear out, that drives him ever-onward, and the other female figure in his life, Bertha (Vida Hope), a fiercely independent figure who exemplifies the union presence in the mills, and proves to be an important ally later in the film. Yet, she is also a zealous and often hectoring figure, demanding that, even as Sidney begins to ingratiate himself with the the laboratory of Birnley's mill as an unpaid intern, that he be properly paid for his time. She, in a character, sets up a perfect foil to Daphne, and both figures essentially represent, even if unwillingly, the two forces that will soon conspire to keep Stanley's invention out of the the public grasp.

Getting his invention noticed, however, is an altogether more complex matter, and what follows is one of the funniest slapstick moments of the entire Ealing filmography, the discovery in in the lab, and the elation of success giving way to his attempts to present Birnley and his board of directors inside. He is, however, rebuffed by the mill owner's obsequious manservant, whose annoyance grows as Sid repeatedly rings on the bell and tries to force his way inside, eventually succeeding with the help of Daphne, and presenting Birnley with a little of the thread. There is, however, even at this point, a sense that the moguls, the factory owners that rule over the town, including the cadaverous Sir John Kierlaw (the great Ernest Thesiger), the influence for the equally scheming C Montgomery Burns in The Simpsons, already only allow Sidney to move forward due to the influence of Daphne, as they begin to make their plans.

From here, the experiments quickly gather pace, with an entire wing of the lab now taken over by the often dangerous experiments that the duo of Sidney and his colleague, Hoskins undertaken, often crouched behind sandbags, as explosions shake the building to the ire of the rest of the mill. Even here, though, Sidney's experiments are seemingly kept in check, Birnley and one of the overseers wandering into their lab, with only the successful creation of enough thread to produce the titular white suit saving them from harm. With the suit now created, and Stanley's invention (and indeed its creator) due to be unveiled to the world that it is about to change, the film changes tack; The Man in the White Suit becomes a film about scientific progress against human commerce, and where the film steps squarely into science fiction.

For the White Suit, at its heart, is an emblem of man's hopes and fears about technological progress. Sidney may well be the British boffin, but he's characteristic of a growing trend in cinema on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1940s and early 1950s of the scientist making decisions for themselves rather the collective "good", driven more by their ambition than common sense, and best seen elsewhere in the remarkably tense Seven Days to Noon (1950), and films like The Man from Planet X (1951), where mad scientists unleash horrifying creations upon the world. The White Suit may well be a more holistic invention, but as Birnley and his fellow mill owners, and the unions independently begin to realise the effect of a thread that will never wear out or stain on their fortunes, and jobs, respectively, so they begin to work against the suit and scientific progress for the good of the community.

With the dawning realisation that his invention will never be allowed to see the light of day, so Sidney finds himself soon entrapped, stuck until he signs the contract to bury his invention. He soon finds himself at loggerheads. despite Daphne's attempts, by Birnley, Kierlaw and the other mill owners, whilst the unions begin to plan strikes. Whilst Sidney soon escapes, making a bid for freedom out into the dark and dramatic night, with the help of Daphne, his freedom is short-lived and he soon finds himself running for his life from both the factory owners and the unions, unusually banding together to stop him at a nearby railway station, where, to Sidney's horror, and the relief of the pursuing bands, the suit falls apart. Stanley is soon fired, only, as he makes his way from the factory, to make a sudden realisation, and head off to (undoubtedly) further discoveries

Is it fair to consider The Man In the White Suit as an underrated film compared to the other three entries in this month? Certainly, it is undoubtedly overshadowed by the rest; releasing in the same year as the beloved The Lavender Hill Mob, but whilst that film is charming, almost to a fault, there's something smart, subversive and more daring about The Man In the White Suit, its swiping view of gender politics, of class, of industrialism and science, and in the targets it chooses, that of capital and the all-powerful unions. Like I'm Alright Jack (1959), in which the Boulting Brothers take a satirical swing at the entrenched labour movement, there is a sense of Ealing once again critiquing the very structure of Britain's major institutions.

Undeniably, though, once more we see Alec Guinness step into another Ealing role and utterly define a veritable archetype-we see that archetype return in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), one of many films that owes a debt to its masterful creation of science-fiction meeting tangible reality. Whilst lesser known, and somewhat relegated to genre cinema, The Man In the White Suit is a smartly made, and occasionally startlingly original film that, in its tale of a world-changing invention and its charming inventor meeting reality in a Northern mill-town, might be a more daring social satire than many of its better known peers

Rating: Highly Recommended

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