The Man in the White Suit (1951)

Directed by Alexander Mackendrick. With Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker, Michael Gough. An altruistic chemist invents a fabric which resists wear and stain as a boon to humanity, but both big business and labor realize it must be suppressed for economic reasons.

The Man In The White Suit is a 1951 science-fiction satirical comedy film made by Ealing Studios.

Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness) has a dream: to develop a fabric that never gets dirty and never wears out. His textile mill bosses discover his secret experiments and initially ban him from their laboratories. But when Daphne (Joan Greenwood) comes to understand what Sidney is trying to do, she convinces her father, Mr. Birnley (Cecil Parker), that developing Sidney's fabric would be great for business...and mankind. Little do they know that they will spark an uprising, not only among the textile workers who would lose their jobs to the ultimate cloth, but also the business owners who would rather maintain the status quo.

Satirical comedy The Man in the White Suit has a wonderful cast including Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood and Cecil Parker.

Is this Ealing's most cynical scene? Curator Mark Duguid remembers a morally twisted moment in the 1951 comedy The Man in the White Suit.

"Why can't you scientists leave things alone?" Cinema in the 1950s often focused on the dangers caused by experiments that went horribly wrong.

The unassuming, nebbishy inventor Sidney Stratton creates a miraculous fabric that will never be dirty or worn out. Clearly he can make a fortune selling clothes made of the material, but may cause a crisis in the process.

Read the Empire review of The Man In The White Suit. Find out everything you need to know about the film from the world's biggest movie destination.

Alexander Mackendrick's trenchant comedy beautifully captures the tensions of postwar Britain moving from austerity to affluence, writes Philip French

Alexander Mackendrick's first two films, both made at Ealing Studios, concern commodities who revolt against their simple market value and assume the properties of myth.

Alec Guinness has one of his finest comic roles in this Ealing satirical comedy about a much patronized amateur scientist whose latest invention creates an uproar in the British textile industry.