The Man in the White Suit September 20, 2006
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s , 1 comment so far
Ealing, the British movie studio formed during World War II that later became famous for a genre of comedy all its own, had a serendipitous relationship with Alec Guinness. In 1949, when Ealing was still looking to eke out its own identity separate from the war propaganda it had been producing originally, the studio released Kind Hearts and Coronets, a darkly humorous story of one man’s effort to become a duke by murdering his entire family. Guinness brilliantly portrayed all eight victims of the D’Ascoyne family and, despite a small amount of screen time per character, gave each family member his (or her) own personality and mannerisms. Two years later, Guinness starred for Ealing in both The Lavender Hill Mob, earning his first Oscar nomination, and The Man in the White Suit
The Man in the White Suit starts off somewhat slowly as we’re introduced to Sidney Stratton (Guinness), an aspiring scientist who has problems keeping a job and is allowed to work in the lab of a large textile company for no pay. His experiments prove explosive and, just when he thinks he’s come up with whatever it is he’s trying to make, he’s branded a loon as his formula is destroyed. Undaunted by such adversity, the idealistic eccentric continues his work elsewhere and eventually constructs a fabric that he claims will never need washing and last forever. His boss is initially thrilled at Sidney’s new invention, until a textile rival opens his eyes to the capitalistic quandries such a development will raise. When Sidney refuses to sign away his rights to the fabric (for 250,000 pounds!), he becomes a hunted man by both the textile management and the industrial workers whose jobs would be threatened if such a product was released commercially.
On paper, the film sounds much less like a comedy than a drama or even a thriller. I can imagine a modern remake that completely loses the satiric elements in favor of a paranoid man-on-the-run suspense film. Of course to do that would be to entirely miss the point of what director and co-writer Alexander Mackendrick was trying to accomplish with The Man in the White Suit. The idea that society is somehow better off by maintaining the status quo with small, periodic advances instead of more sweeping and effective technologies is perhaps even more ripe for exploration today than it was in 1951 Britain. The questionable selfishness that Sidney exhibits in the development of his fabric is perceived as harming a larger group of people than it would help. Yet, is this really much better than capitalist society’s frequent appeals to a lowest common denominator in various aspects of life? Consumers are constantly bombarded with one-size-fits-all advertisements and products that we’re expected to purchase again and again. This is a problem that will continue to plague civilized nations indefinitely as long as we’re consistently given new toys that require frequent replacement or repair (see: computers, televisions, kitchen appliances, automobiles, cellular phones, etc.). The crux of the issue, as explored in The Man in the White Suit, is that any deviation from such a rigid tradition might result in chaotic consequences.
While the film certainly can be appreciated for its serious themes, there’s also a great deal of humor as expected by the involvement of Guinness and Ealing. The gag that most stands out to me is the baker, also dressed in solid white, who is briefly mistaken for Sidney when the mob of people are running after him. It’s not necessarily a belly-laugh inducing bit, but it’s smartly done and injects a nice touch of humor into the climactic chase. There’s also a poignant quality to some of the humor, such as the final solution to the seemingly indestructible suit. That all the chaos is eventually rendered moot surely has some comedic value.
In some ways, though, the movie succeeds more in idea than execution. Despite having a running time of less than ninety minutes, the first half drags a bit (at least on a first viewing) if you’re waiting for the titular suit to make an appearance. The idea of Alec Guinness wearing the blinding white suit is itself charmingly funny and the brilliant poster is perfect, if somewhat misleading. Furthermore, the satiric elements of the film almost lurk beneath the surface, only occasionally drawing attention to their presence. In some ways, this is an applaudable approach for not hitting the audience over the head with a message. In others, it muddies up the intentions of what should be derived from the satire. The second half of the film is smart, but it seems more admirable on reflection than enjoyable in practice. Additionally, we see Sidney evolve from an innocent idealistic who doesn’t understand the magnitude of his invention into a much more selfish and manipulative character who, by the end of the film, seems determined to see his fabric realized no matter the cost. Such an unsympathetic shift can be frustrating and mildly negate the unscrupulous actions of the textile companies for the audience.
Four years after The Man in the White Suit, Guinness and Mackendrick reteamed for The Ladykillers, the latter’s final film for Ealing. Guinness, of course, moved on from his Ealing work into more serious fare for David Lean and Ronald Neame before playing Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. His performance here as the naively determined Sidney is a fine example of disappearing into the character without coming off as showy or forced. It’s not hyperbole to proclaim him as simply one of the finest, most versatile actors in film history. Mackendrick, by contrast, is frequently discussed as a great ”could-have-been” director who was unable to approach the great heights he scaled at Ealing after the arduous production of Sweet Smell of Success, a biting criticism of the power of gossip columnists such as Walter Winchell. That film, a cynical noir masterpiece, essentially ruined his career as a director and he would only finish three more movies before becoming Dean of Film at the California Insitute of the Arts in 1969, a position he held until right before his death in 1993.
Lacombe, Lucien September 14, 2006
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1970s , add a comment
Lacombe, Lucien
Unhappy with his janitorial job, Lucien (played by Pierre Blaise in his only major role before dying in a car wreck a year after the film’s release) returns to the countryside where his mother lives with another man. There he finds out that his father has joined the Resistance movement. When Lucien visits a schoolteacher in hopes of also joining the underground, he’s quickly rejected. By chance, he stumbles upon the local German police headquarters and doesn’t hesitate to name the teacher as the local underground leader. This act of betrayal against France provides Lucien with an opportunity to join the German police and to live a life of privilege and power. A fellow officer decides that Lucien needs a nice suit and takes him to a Jewish tailor who’s fled Paris. At the man’s home, Lucien sees the tailor’s daughter, France, and is immediately interested.
Despite his initial enthusiasm at the idea, there’s no reason to believe Lucien ever has any interest in defeating the Nazi occupation of France. The more likely explanation is that he’s simply looking for an alternative to being a hospital janitor. His motives throughout the film, in fact, are rarely clear and his loyalties are obviously malleable as evidenced by his stark turnabout from potential Resistance fighter to working for the Gestapo. Even his attachment to France, the Jewish tailor’s daughter, is somewhat perfunctory and never appears entirely genuine. Their fate in the last act seems to have more to do with a pocket watch than love.
The brilliance of Malle’s film, as illuminated in Pauline Kael’s insightful essay included with the Criterion Collection DVD, is that, despite behaving so venally, Lucien never comes across as a complete monster. He isn’t Ralph Fiennes’ Amon Goeth character in Schindler’s List, for example. His actions, while deplorable, are not based in any hatred of Jews or love for the Nazis, nor does he seem to be looking for excitement in a Leopold & Loeb sort of way. He merely needed something else to do and the German police provided such an opportunity. The terrible things involved with the work are no different than the rabbits he shot or the chicken he killed with his hands earlier in the film. Lucien seems unable or unwilling to separate what is acceptable and what is reprehensible in his actions. There is no struggle inside him about what he’s doing or regret in what he’s done.
All of this “moral ambiguity” from the protoganist of a 138 minute film, when placed in the setting of the Holocaust, can be difficult to sit through. I found myself, having been trained by numerous other films, waiting for some kind of redemption for Lucien and frequently surprised at what I was watching. Whether any redemption actually occurs is debatable and Malle ends the film with a short epilogue as though Lucien Lacombe had been a real person. Over thirty years have passed since the initial release of Lacombe, Lucien and it remains compelling. The “banality of evil,” as Kael phrases it, never seems to go out of style and the idea that a person such as Lucien could have little or no motive for his actions is as contemporary as ever.
Finally, after watching 3/4 of the Malle releases from Criterion this year as well as some of his English language work, I’m impressed by his versatility and how he’s able to make the audience watch the often unsympathetic characters in his films without being completely repulsed. I haven’t been able to sympathize with people who kill their boss, sleep with their mother, join the German police, or have an affair with their son’s fiancee, but Malle’s talent has kept me watching with great interest. From what I’ve read, Malle has often taken a backseat to his New Wave contemporaries but that doesn’t seem fair at all. His films are different than those of Truffaut, Godard, Rivette or Rohmer. Additionally, like Fritz Lang and Michelangelo Antonioni, he was one of the rare directors who was successful in both his native, non-English language, as well as in the United States and/or in English. Despite the often controversial subject matter of his films, they manage to retain plenty of substance decades after they were made and the humanity Malle gives his characters, even if they’re not deserving of it, makes his work fascinating and worthwhile.
Dark Passage September 9, 2006
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1940s , add a comment 
There’s something perversely appealing about a movie which stars Humphrey Bogart, voted the number one movie star ever by the American Film Institute a few years back, yet prevents the audience from seeing his face for 2/3 of the picture. Dark Passage
Adapting a novel by David Goodis, who would later have his book Down There brought to the screen by François Truffaut as Shoot the Piano Player, Delmer Daves effectively served as the director and, less successfully, as the sole credited screenwriter of Dark Passage. The film starts off with some unusual shots of Bogart’s character, Vincent Parry, escaping from a large barrel on a San Quentin delivery truck where the audience’s perspective is that of Parry looking out of the barrel. Parry’s cinematic luck leads to a rescue by Lauren Bacall, who just happened to be in the area and felt like giving a fugitive a break. We later find out that Bacall’s character had followed Parry’s case because of a similarity in her own life and that they have a mutual acquaintance, played by the always impressive Agnes Moorehead. Since Parry’s face is plastered across every newspaper in San Francisco, he eventually resorts to a disgraced plastic surgeon who warns that he can make someone look like a bulldog or a monkey if he doesn’t like them. Luckily for the audience, he likes Parry, who, after a week of wearing bandages over his face, comes out looking like Humphrey Bogart.
In many ways, Dark Passage is a nonsensical mishmash of coincidences, albeit one that I enjoyed. The subjective camera technique works for me because it’s a rarely used device, but I could also see the argument that it’s unnecessary here. The coincidental plot contrivances are a tad more grating, but somehow the two leads make up for it. A deviously sinister cast of characters helps as well. However, the most glaring head-scratcher for me was the detective in the diner who proceeds to interrogate Bogart because he mistakenly asked about the results from a racetrack which had closed down a month previous. Even that bit of absurdity, though, doesn’t detract much from such a highly watchable film.
This was the third of four legendary collaborations between Bogart and Bacall and probably the most neglected. Delmer Daves wasn’t Howard Hawks or John Huston and David Goodis wasn’t Ernest Hemingway or Raymond Chandler. Regardless, Dark Passage is an entertaining film greatly aided by the pair’s obvious chemistry and Bogart’s terrific performance. He skillfully treads the line between the fugitive nature of Parry, such as when he’s pounding the first guy who offers to give him a lift following the escape, and his professed innocence. Bogart’s Parry isn’t exactly a tough guy, nor is he incredibly bright as he shows repeatedly in his encounters with the cab driver and the cop in the diner. Instead, he’s just a regular guy looking to keep his freedom and eventually make his way to a South American paradise.
Putting aside the often inane coincidences (such as the cabbie with a heart of gold who not only gives up a possible $5,000 reward for turning in fugitive Parry, but also conveniently knows a plastic surgeon who’s cheap, nearby and works in the middle of the night!), Dark Passage is a testament to classic Hollywood star power and the allure of film noir. Bogart was winding down his hero roles and Bacall was at the height of her powers. Even if it’s not a prototypical noir, Dark Passage has enough elements of that genre to mostly fit into its ever-broadening definition, although the ending probably should have come a scene earlier.