Category Archives: DVD

The Man in the White Suit

November 14, 2012Classic Films, DVDAlex Guinness, Alexander Mackendrick, Cecil Parker, Ealing Comedy, Ealing Studios, J Arthur Rank, Joan GreenwoodJosephine Grahl

By Josephine Grahl

Paul Kinsey: It’s from the future, a place so close to us now,
filled with wonder and ease.

Don Draper: Except some people think of the future and it upsets them. They see a rocket, they start building a bomb shelter.

— Mad Men

There are films which seem as though they come from another world. The Man In The White Suit (1951) is one of those. In some ways it’s a straightforward comedy about unforeseen consequences; but in another way, it’s a film about a world that might have been but never was – that might have been but now never can be.

Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness) is a maverick research scientist in the textile industry occupied with synthesising a new fabric. As a researcher, he’s fired from several mills, but then finds himself working for Birnley’s, first as a labourer and then, by accident, as a researcher. The gradual sequence in which he appears, peering from behind his lab equipment, disappearing behind a door, to the gentle ‘blip… bloop’ of his chemical process is a gently comical delight.

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Trouble in Paradise

November 12, 2012Classic Films, Comedy, Directors, DVD1930s, comedy, ernst lubitsch, romantic comedy, trouble in paradiseViv Wilby

By Viv Wilby

Some years ago, the National Film Theatre (as it was then) asked members to nominate a little-seen film for a Christmas-showing. The winner was Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 romantic comedy, Trouble in Paradise. Co-written with Lubitsch’s regular collaborator, Samson ‘The Jazz Singer’ Raphaelson, Trouble in Paradise takes full advantage of the permissiveness that abounded before the enforcement of censor Will Hays’ Motion Picture Production Code in 1934. The script, which is heavy with sexual innuendo and irony, was considered too racy during the code era and re-issues were refused. The film wasn’t discovered again until the late 1960s.

Like a lot of early Hollywood comedies, the setting is old Europe: chic, cultured, decadent, gloriously wealthy. But Lubitsch doesn’t waste any time in making a central point (and a good visual gag). The garbageman we see in the very first shot is also an aria-singing gondolier, punting a heap of festering rubbish down the Grand Canal. Glamour, romance and escapism goes hand-in-hand with rottenness and filth. Continue reading Trouble in Paradise →

Margin Call

November 8, 2012DVD, New ReleasesDemi Moore, DVD releases, global financial crisis, Jeremy Irons, Kevin Spacey, margin call, Mary McDonnell, Oscar nominated, Paul Bettany, Penn Badgley, Simon Baker, Stanley Tucci, Zachary QuintoSusan Patterson

by Susan Patterson

margin call (noun) 1. a demand by a broker that an investor deposit further cash or securities to cover possible losses

J C Chandor’s Margin Call (2011) is a clever, smart film, and I don’t understand how I missed it when it went on general release in January. Admittedly, it came out the same week as Shame and War Horse, but I was already jaded by Fassbender’s cock, and horses, even brave ones, hold even less interest for me.

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