Another classic Ealing re-watch. It's a jolt to see the (not much, but seeming so) younger Alec Guinness playing a completely different character from the sinister professor of Ladykillers. He manages to be completely convincing at both while at the same time being a bit alien. Some actors wear their hearts on their sleeves or are the same in every film and he's the complete opposite - I feel I wouldn't know him at all if I met him. Here he's Sidney Stratton, who has in common with the professor a kind of obsessive focus, but for Sidney it's on creating a super-molecule fibre that will be both indestructible (because to break it would require breaking a molecule) and never need cleaning (because of its static-electric properties). As nobody will willingly give him the equipment and (expensive) chemicals he needs for his experiments, he has resorted to taking odd jobs at various textile mills (all oop North, naturally) and inserting himself into the R&D department, relying on his fellow scientists' absent-minded assumptions that that equipment belongs to one of their fellows.
He is eventually found out by Daphne Birnley
(not quite the "Birling" of An Inspector Calls) - played by the delightfully-voiced Joan Greenwood (think Glynis Johns), the daughter of one of the mills' owners, whose fiancé (Michael "Celestial Toymaker" Gough)
is a bigwig at a rival mill, who convinces her father to give him a chance. After much explosive destruction he succeeds, to the horror of every Birling rival in the textile industry and Sidney's former friends (including the loyal Bertha, who is even more loyal to the Union) among the workers, who immediately realize that indestructible clothes are the everlasting gobstoppers of the garment industry and will put them all out of business/work. Sidney doesn't see it that way, thinking that this advance will be good for humanity, right up until the point at which his former landlady finally drives the point home, at which point he has been chased all over town be everyone in his glowing white suit.
This is probably my third favorite Ealing (after Ladykillers and Kind Hearts), with Greenwood rivaling Guinness as the main reason to watch.
It's another Alexander Mackendrick production, which means it's a comedy shot like a film noir, which is a good combination.
It is also almost too bracingly cynical, which means no happy ending for Sidney and either woman who seems drawn to him.
And also a hint of disaster to come. Oh, another standout is the little girl who helps Sidney escape after Bertha has briefly imprisoned him, who went on to record a song that I know mainly because of the Toy Dolls.
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