Gregory Peck plays a white-collar suburbanite who moves up from a safe job at a non-profit foundation to an executive position at a television network ("UBC") located on Madison Avenue.
Jennifer Jones, as Peck's wife, is the one who urges and convinces him to make the switch - a chance at a little more money. At the same time, his grandmother has died and has left him her old house - but the inheritance is being disputed by her former caretaker.
In all these things, Tom Rath (Peck) is cautious, while his wife, Betsy, wants to take risks. In the world we're dealing with - the '50s - he's the breadwinner, and she can only advise from the sidelines. But the film makes it clear that such a relationship isn't necessarily a power imbalance. Betsy is quite assertive and is obviously an equal partner in the marriage.
But something is missing - which she acknowledges, while he doesn't. Something hasn't been right since the war. There's an air of defeat and resignation that hangs over everything. It has to do with those repressed memories of Tom's, that keep coming out in sudden flashbacks.
Nunnally Johnson, a very good screenwriter, took several cracks at directing, around this time. As a writer-director, he wasn't on the level of, say, Billy Wilder. Some of his scenes are unnecessarily slow, and long. Mostly this jumps out at you when Peck is off the screen - in the scenes with Fredric March (as the network chief) and Ann Harding (as his wife), for example. Harding's line delivery is particularly lugubrious, for no apparent reason. Lee J. Cobb's scenes - though he's effective, as a suburban Connecticut judge - are also full of long, long pauses.
Gregory Peck himself is not exactly a ball of fire, but he at least conveys a convincing and compelling inner intensity - and he gets to emote in some of those war flashbacks.
The one actually lively performance in the film comes from Jennifer Jones, whose every appearance is welcome (her role is not as large as the ones she usually played).
Anyway, you'll have to see it to know what I mean.
The funny thing is, the pace of the film does have a way of drawing you in. Though protracted, it isn't ever boring. You never really know where things are going, or how they'll turn out.
Mainly, the film explores everyday ethical and moral dilemmas, and how an honest man can only be happy doing what he feels is right. It also explores how the things we did in the past, that seem to be gone and forgotten, have a way of intruding on the present in significant ways.
A few years earlier, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit would probably have been filmed in black and white, in the old "Academy" aspect ratio (think A Letter To Three Wives, or All About Eve). But by 1955, 20th Century-Fox was committed to making almost all their films in wide-screen CinemaScope and color. It's interesting to see an intimate drama done in this way. It has the effect of opening it up, especially the WWII flashback scenes.
I suggest you stick with this one and see it through to the end. You'll probably enjoy it, and find it satisfying.
Jennifer Jones, as Peck's wife, is the one who urges and convinces him to make the switch - a chance at a little more money. At the same time, his grandmother has died and has left him her old house - but the inheritance is being disputed by her former caretaker.
In all these things, Tom Rath (Peck) is cautious, while his wife, Betsy, wants to take risks. In the world we're dealing with - the '50s - he's the breadwinner, and she can only advise from the sidelines. But the film makes it clear that such a relationship isn't necessarily a power imbalance. Betsy is quite assertive and is obviously an equal partner in the marriage.
But something is missing - which she acknowledges, while he doesn't. Something hasn't been right since the war. There's an air of defeat and resignation that hangs over everything. It has to do with those repressed memories of Tom's, that keep coming out in sudden flashbacks.
Nunnally Johnson, a very good screenwriter, took several cracks at directing, around this time. As a writer-director, he wasn't on the level of, say, Billy Wilder. Some of his scenes are unnecessarily slow, and long. Mostly this jumps out at you when Peck is off the screen - in the scenes with Fredric March (as the network chief) and Ann Harding (as his wife), for example. Harding's line delivery is particularly lugubrious, for no apparent reason. Lee J. Cobb's scenes - though he's effective, as a suburban Connecticut judge - are also full of long, long pauses.
Gregory Peck himself is not exactly a ball of fire, but he at least conveys a convincing and compelling inner intensity - and he gets to emote in some of those war flashbacks.
The one actually lively performance in the film comes from Jennifer Jones, whose every appearance is welcome (her role is not as large as the ones she usually played).
Anyway, you'll have to see it to know what I mean.
The funny thing is, the pace of the film does have a way of drawing you in. Though protracted, it isn't ever boring. You never really know where things are going, or how they'll turn out.
Mainly, the film explores everyday ethical and moral dilemmas, and how an honest man can only be happy doing what he feels is right. It also explores how the things we did in the past, that seem to be gone and forgotten, have a way of intruding on the present in significant ways.
A few years earlier, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit would probably have been filmed in black and white, in the old "Academy" aspect ratio (think A Letter To Three Wives, or All About Eve). But by 1955, 20th Century-Fox was committed to making almost all their films in wide-screen CinemaScope and color. It's interesting to see an intimate drama done in this way. It has the effect of opening it up, especially the WWII flashback scenes.
I suggest you stick with this one and see it through to the end. You'll probably enjoy it, and find it satisfying.
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