A young scientist invents a material that is indestructible and repels dirt. He soon finds himself caught between the moguls of the textile industry and the trade unions, all equally determined that his invention never sees the light of day.

Kind Hearts and Coronets may have given Alec Guinness his most headline-grabbing roles at Ealing Studios, but The Man in the White Suit gave him his greatest. A Kafkaesque comedy of ambition and disenchantment, this acerbic industrial satire is laced with a gothic vein of postwar atomic anxiety.