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The conduct of progress, down the drain or up in flames, so it goes in the Ealing retelling of The Philosopher's Stone. The artist (Alec Guinness) is a chemist masquerading as a laborer, all he wants is his own "corner of the bench" for his gurgling beakers and test tubes. Out of explosions emerges the great creation, the perpetually immaculate fabric (dirt runs off it like liquid mercury) that becomes a threat to "the delicate balance of trade." A system of nincompoops, the mill owner (Cecil Parker) and the head proletarian (Vida Hope) join forces to chase idealism down the alley. "Flotsam floating on the flood tide of profits. That's capitalism for you." Textile industries stand for British cinema in this drolly ferocious view of stagnation, sometimes it takes a Yank like Alexander Mackendrick to laud the mad inspiration behind subdued veneers. Cobblestone streets and smokestacks and geometric laboratory décor situate the fable between Industrial Revolution and Atomic Age, the vein of Kafkaesque comedy accommodates Ernest Thesiger as the corporate death's head, wheezing as company limousines glide like hearses across the screen. ("Une science si fantastique," declares Godard's Nosferatu in Alphaville.) Blandly genteel yet utterly obsessed, Guinness plays the noble knight until the phosphorescent armor is literally picked apart by the mob, a high-angled shot has the thwarted genius in his briefs. Back to the drawing board... If there's a sliver of hope for Mackendrick, it rests with the daughter of the house (Joan Greenwood) who sees the value of invention yet is wised-up enough to play the system from within. Listening to the scientist go on about carbohydrates, she grins sly and wide: "It's just the suit. It looks like it is wearing you." Boulting's I'm All Right Jack picks up the analysis. With Michael Gough, Howard Marion-Crawford, Henry Mollison, Patric Doonan, and Miles Malleson. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |