25 January 1956 “Movie on a Saturday: Man in the Grey Flannel Suit”

This film made in 1956 starring Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones was based on the best selling novel of 1955 of the same name. I really fell in love with this movie in my own 1955. It touches on the growing reality of the commercialism, TV culture and Business based new post war world. The feeling of the man, returned from the terrors of war to face a world he fought to save that seems almost sad and bleak in its own way.

There are also just great moments of vintage life: The kitchen scene at the beginning. The look of the lovely old house that is just a White Elephant in the 1950’s as taxes and general costs couldn’t allow someone in the same family to ever build or run a house like that again.( These type of homes were often sold off, torn down and all their beautiful grounds turned into subdivisions for the growing post war families. )

The moments when we see the father trying to pry his children from the TV who seem to always be watching an endless Western where people are getting shot. Their passive attitude at the deaths they see in the Westerns Juxtaposed with the flashbacks of War time when one is often pushed to the ultimate human cruelty simply to get a warm coat to survive.

It is just a good all round film and the perfect thing for a Saturday afternoon. Or better yet, get up  a light buffet style supper, have friends round, dress vintage and watch this together like a Saturday night date. You won’t be disappointed.