(Alexander Mackendrick, 1951, Studiocanal, U)
Last September marked the centenary of the birth of Alexander Mackendrick (1912-93). Born in the States, raised in Scotland, he was, with Richard Hamer, one of the two truly great products of Ealing Studios. Their output was small (each made made five movies under Michael Balcon's aegis), but distinguished and distinctive and always digging beneath Ealing's cosy Little England ethos. Oscar-nominated for its screenplay (by Mackendrick, his brother-in-law the playwright Roger MacDougall and John Dighton, Hamer's collaborator on Kind Hearts and Coronets), The Man in the White Suit is arguably Mackendrick's most trenchant comedy.
It stars Alec Guinness as Sidney Stratton, a dreamily eccentric inventor who develops an artificial fibre that's indestructible and resistant to dirt. Apparently a boon to humanity, this fabric spreads alarm in a Lancashire mill town whose prosperity the invention threatens. Management and workers unite against the starry-eyed idealist Stratton, who...
Last September marked the centenary of the birth of Alexander Mackendrick (1912-93). Born in the States, raised in Scotland, he was, with Richard Hamer, one of the two truly great products of Ealing Studios. Their output was small (each made made five movies under Michael Balcon's aegis), but distinguished and distinctive and always digging beneath Ealing's cosy Little England ethos. Oscar-nominated for its screenplay (by Mackendrick, his brother-in-law the playwright Roger MacDougall and John Dighton, Hamer's collaborator on Kind Hearts and Coronets), The Man in the White Suit is arguably Mackendrick's most trenchant comedy.
It stars Alec Guinness as Sidney Stratton, a dreamily eccentric inventor who develops an artificial fibre that's indestructible and resistant to dirt. Apparently a boon to humanity, this fabric spreads alarm in a Lancashire mill town whose prosperity the invention threatens. Management and workers unite against the starry-eyed idealist Stratton, who...
- 12/16/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
The Venice and Toronto film festivals officially announced the big films that would premiere at their event this week. Expect lots of Clooney
The big story
It's festival time as the official announcements of the Venice and Toronto line-ups confirm rumours that had been sloshing around the internet for weeks. Venice leaked via Variety on Tuesday (officially confirmed just this afternoon). Toronto's big catches drip ... dripped out via an organiser's Twitter account later the same day. Tiny, tenacious Telluride's still watertight, but it definitely won't have the world premieres of George Clooney's The Ides of March, Roman Polanski's Carnage or Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (all playing at Venice), and better not have the first showings of The Descendants (Alexander Payne), The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies) or Moneyball (Bennett Miller), if it doesn't want several angry Canadian festival programmers hiking up to its gates.
Venice runs August 31-September 10, Toronto September 8-18. Guardian.
The big story
It's festival time as the official announcements of the Venice and Toronto line-ups confirm rumours that had been sloshing around the internet for weeks. Venice leaked via Variety on Tuesday (officially confirmed just this afternoon). Toronto's big catches drip ... dripped out via an organiser's Twitter account later the same day. Tiny, tenacious Telluride's still watertight, but it definitely won't have the world premieres of George Clooney's The Ides of March, Roman Polanski's Carnage or Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (all playing at Venice), and better not have the first showings of The Descendants (Alexander Payne), The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies) or Moneyball (Bennett Miller), if it doesn't want several angry Canadian festival programmers hiking up to its gates.
Venice runs August 31-September 10, Toronto September 8-18. Guardian.
- 7/28/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
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