But here's the thing......it still captivates (the lush Bernard Herrmann score helps)and it still resonates.....because the issues and quandries it raises are universal and still with us.
Gregory Peck, stoic and sturdy as ever, plays the title guy......a World War 2 veteran turned suburban white collar executive. After his 9 to 5 stint in the concrete canyons of New York City, he's back on the commuter train to home in Connecticut. At the train station, his wife (Jennifer Jones) dutifully waits to pick him up and exhort him to snag a better job in the rat race, cause the washing machine's broke and she wants a better house for them and their three kids.
But the film's in no great hurry to resolve the marital finances......first on its crowded agenda is Peck reliving his war experiences in lengthy flashbacks, which range from the brutal (stabbing to death a young German sentry) to the gently romantic (his brief but passionate affair with a young Italian girl (Marisa Pavan)) You could possibly interpret these scenes as Hollywood's first tentative attempt at depicting PTSD, but we doubt it......Peck's war traumas hardly put a dent in his granite demeanor and it's the romance that eventually comes back to haunt him rather than the battle casualties.
Urged on by Jones, Peck climbs the corporate ladder, becoming a public relations writer for a TV network CEO (Frederic March) who hopes to anoint himself as the nation's premier advocate of mental health. March quickly warms to family man Peck, since March's network empire building has made a shambles of his own family life.....with a bitter ex-wife and a spoiled, scandal-ridden daughter who'd rather party with playboys than go to college.
As the film creeps along at about 2 miles an hour, Peck's problems multiply, a slow motion tidal wave of woe. Peck's thwarted at work by his jealous cold-as-a-dead-cod superior (well played by that reliable old costume-drama villain, Henry Daniell). In another subplot, Peck's forced into a legal duel with a crooked old geezer who cared for Peck's grandmother while stealing the old lady blind. And for the showstopper of our hero's troubles........he discovers he's the father of a young Italian boy, the result of his wartime fling. This news does not sit well with Mrs.Gray Flannel Suit.....
cue Bernard Herrmann's sweeping strings as Jones flees the house....
If you're still with the movie at this point, the script lays out its primary points for you. Peck flirts with the idea of turning into a corporate 'yes man', going along with the sycophants who've been feeding March crappy mental health speeches. When Jones exhorts him not to suck up and be honest, Peck warns her she can't have it both ways.......cause if bluntness with the boss gets him fired, there goes her new washing machine and her new house to put it in. Over drinks, March spells out the crucial difference between himself and Peck......as a Mover & Shaker, he gave up any semblance of family life, but he realizes he can't build his empire without the 9 to 5-ers like Peck who want to go home to the wife and kids.
Based on the BQ's own life experience, the only part that never rung true with us was Frederic March's touchy-feely corporate Bigwig. He invites Peck to ditch family responsibilities and join him in the fast lane.......and yet he's unfailingly gracious when Peck turns him down. What utter bullshit. Not in this universe or any other does that happen. In the world outside 1950's Cinemascope movies, if you tell your boss you'd rather attend your daughter's graduation than work late.....trust us, you're dead to him.....and your job's not long for this world either.....
But we stand completely on Gregory Peck's side in this debate.....we've slipped, slid and survived through enough corporate slime to understand what's important in this life and what isn't......(and BQ assumes that's why our daughter opted for college instead of running off with a playboy,,,,we think....)
The screenwriter-director of "The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit", Nunally Johnson was unfortunately nothing more than a point-and-shoot guy, arranging his actors like carefully spaced furniture across the Cinemascope frame. And he edits film as if under heavy sedation. Bernard Herrmann's score functions as the only real behind-the-camera creative force here.....if the movie had a real director it might have ended up as powerful as it promised. So despite the valid topics it deals with, we can just about scrape up 2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2) for this particular commuter. Don't forget to clock out at 5 and go home......
No comments:
Post a Comment