Kritiken

The welcome broadness of the comedy, the way it hits on a gut level, gives the impression that Mackendrick is spraying buckshot, but the character work is too pointed, too well-rounded. The catalyst of The Man in the White Suit’s delirious unraveling may not be wholly believable, but everything after is.

[The Man in the White Suit] transforms the everyday more redolently into the mythic. The unbreakable and highly luminous threads from which the film’s invincible garments are loomed feel suspiciously borrowed from the spindle of the Fates—as fire was from Mount Olympus in the Promethean story.

[The Man in the White Suit] is a comedy, certainly, but threaded through with seriousness... It is interesting to note how even-handed it was in satirising both boardroom idiocy and trade union intransigence. The Man in the White Suit is arguably Mackendrick's most trenchant comedy.

The Man in the White Suit is arguably Mackendrick's most trenchant comedy... The movie captures the tensions of 1951 Britain as it moves from socialist austerity towards Tory affluence and is as unsparing on the boardroom as on the unions.

[The Man in the White Suit] is a clever and often cynical film – as dark in its own way as the more obviously ‘black’ comedies Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Ladykillers (1955)... [an] unusually morally complex comedy.

One of Guinness' best performances... Typically, the Ealing formula for goodnatured whimsy prevents Mackendrick from pushing the darker aspects of the theme to their logical conclusion... [But] there is enough of Kafka in the film to lift it right out of the Ealing comedy tramlines.

[The Man in the White Suit] is an unusual comedy in that it isn't especially concerned with being funny — the one scene of people laughing is as cruel as anything in cinema — but nevertheless pokes fun at sacred cows from all over the political spectrum, from pure scientific research through tool-downing shop stewards to monstrous capitalists.

The Ealing comedies didn’t come much better than [The Man in the White Suit]... Mackendrick was one of the few who worked for Ealing who put his personal stamp on every project: his characters are warmly drawn without condescension, and his social commentary has real bite.

[A] deft and sardonic little satire... [The scriptwriters] concocted a most ingenious fable of the mischief that scientists can do with their test tubes and curiosity in disturbing the status quo. And Mr. Mackendrick... has even improved upon his technique of deft, dry comment with a camera in this film.

The plot is a variation of an old theme, but it comes out with a nice fresh coat of paint... Particular tribute must be paid to the sound effects department. The bubbly sound of liquids passing through specially prepared contraptions in the lab is one of the most effective running gags seen in a British film.