The Man in the White Suit

"my father wanted to rewatch this, so we rented it. at first i had a little trouble getting into it; the dvd we got had no subtitles and the sound preservation was a little wobbly. added to that, there's a device that makes repetitive blooping noises that sound like a reject prop from a Willy Wonka movie. it's probably charming to most people, but it irritated the hell out of me (misophonia, don'cha know). once it got going, however, it got really interesting. the movie is an anti-capitalist leftist gem. capitalism cannot abide a need permanently filled and finds such technology inherently threatening. it's the same reason many corporations force their employees to destroy their unsold products or purposefully build electronics to fail after a certain point. the market must continue to inflate until an inevitable crash. and sidney's product is such a threat to the established order. the power of labor unions are respected in this film, even if they don't see the value of his invention (i'd argue that little old ladies shouldn't HAVE to do the backbreaking menial labor of washing clothes to make ends meet). the union insists sidney care about his pay and take his breaks, because they've fought so hard for decades to be treated humanely. neuroatypical sidney doesn't give a sh*t, of course. he flaps and flails and dances his obsessive way forward (the near-slapstick humor of Alec Guinness is excellent in this film) until he's pursued by a mob to rival that of The Third Man. did i mention it's a really smart sci-fi film about applied chemistry and material science? because wow."