Rating: 4/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2024 | 31/52 | 50s Sci-Fi
Michael Corland courts fellow textile industrialist, Alan Birnley, in hopes of Birnley purchasing his mill. Mr. Corland is also courting Birnley’s daughter, Daphne. Birnley is stoic throughout the tour until he encounters an unusual and complex chemistry setup emitting a rhythmic gurgling. No one on the tour or in the lab can explain it. The accounting team looks into it while the tour continues, discovering that, whatever it is, they’ve invested £4000 on it.
Through the process of elimination, they discover it is a personal project of research chemist Sidney Stratton. They discharge him for misleading them — Sidney’s seventh firing in a row. After the madcap display, Birnley decides not to invest in Corland’s mill. The Employment Exchange finds Sidney a brute labor position at Birnley Mills. Sidney takes it because they have a lab and facilities he could use. When he’s not working, or on a union-mandated tea break, he works on his formulas and surveys the lab.
When Birnley Mills receives an electron microscope, Sidney will bring it into the lab. Once there, Sidney stops one of the lab workers from misusing it and shows them where all the microscope components are. His expertise leads the lab to offer him an unpaid temporary position to help them use it while they learn the ropes.
Daphne catches Sidney in her father’s mill. Since Sidney cost her fiance her father’s investment, she threatens to tell her father. Stanley begs her not to, giving her the lowdown on his work. In short, he has developed a fabric that repels dirt and never wears out.
The film critiques the capitalist system that produces brilliant minds through expensive education, but no mechanisms to put these minds in positions where they would be of use. When Stratton takes on the labor position at Burnley, he joins their union. His coworkers are furious at him for taking on scab labor.
By most accounts, clothes that never wear out would be tremendous. In a system requiring continuous growth, selling a product you never have to replace is risky. Because it doesn’t just affect the mill, but the producers and retailers who have invested. The union workers at the factory worry about what will happen to them too.
Alec Guinness gives a charming performance as a brilliant but naïve scientist who believes success can occur in a vacuum.
This film is short, smart, and only slightly wears out its welcome.