The Man in the White Suite (1951)

Ealing Studio's comedy stars Alec Guinness as Sidney Stratton, an eccentric chemist who develops a synthetic fabric that not only repels stains, but is nearly indestructible (delightful scene where a blow torch must be used to cut a piece of string). Stratton's discovery threatens to send the whole textile industry into a panic, and in a enjoyable reversal of the capital vs labor divide often played for laughs in English comedy's of this era (see for example I'm All Right Jack) both the workers and the suites are desperate to keep Stratton's suites off the market. Joan Greenwood is great as one of Stratton's two love interests, and the cast is studied with great English character actors of the period like Michael Gough and Miles Malleson. An enjoyable 85 minutes. ***