The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Customer Reviews:

• The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit: The movie is in excellent condition and the quality of the original flim has been restored. There is a section on the DVD that shows how it was done. Very glad to get a copy of this classic.
• Perhaps more interesting today: I've never been impressed with those who claim to be struggling against hidebound reactionaries. All too often, they have beliefs that are more out-of-touch with reality than those they criticize.
  
  Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger, for instance, often duped liberals with her claim to be battling for the right to talk about sex. In reality, the America of the early twentieth-century was still heavily agricultural and no agricultural society, surrounded by constantly breeding animals, is ignorant about sex. What Sanger's mostly religious critics disliked was a view of human sexuality that was a quirky blend of the mechanical and the mystical picked up from Havelock Ellis. If you've not heard of him, Ellis was a once well-regarded sex expert, a sort of Kinsey of the early 1900s. Like Kinsey, he was strange when it came to sex. He married a lesbian, hoping to convert her to heterosexuality through his charms and despite the fact that he was impotent. Try to wrap your mind around that. "Weird" doesn't quite do justice to what he was and what he made of Margaret Sanger and her kindred today.
  
  "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," often described as an illustration of 1950s conformity, is equally unsettling to liberal stereotyping. In it Gregory Peck is a haunted man, haunted by the horrors of World War II, haunted by an affair he had in Italy, and haunted (or perhaps nagged) by an ambitious wife who can't understand how the war changed him. That's hardly the dull, "Leave it To Beaver" world some want us to imagine the 1950s as.
  
  Perhaps the most refreshing thing about this film are two attitudes Peck displays that far less common today. Gregory Peck doesn't bail out of his marriage when troubles arise. He fights to keep it healthy even when that harms his career. And he also keeps his problems to himself, not blabbing them out to any and all for "therapy," and not playing the victim.
  
  This is a stimulating and provocative film, perhaps even more so than when it was released in 1956. It belongs on your "much watch" list. You might also want to listen to the commentary track, which discusses life a half-century ago. I didn't know, for instance, that in the 1950s, the style of a man's hat said something about his status at work. One style meant management, another meant office worker. Peck's hat says that as a writer he was among the latter.
  
  --Michael W. Perry, editor of The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective: The Birth Control Classic by Margaret Sanger and others.
• FLANNEL SUIT: A VERY GOOD MOVIE,RIVETING AND INTENSE BUT A LITTLE TO LONG BUT I STILL ENJOYED THE MOVIE!
• Gregory Peck, the quintessential Everyman: THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT, based on the acclaimed novel by Sloan Wilson, resonated quite heavily with many men and their families in 1956. Some fifty years later, this movie still holds a powerful lesson about the balance of work commitments and family duty.
  
  In post-war New York, working-class family man Tom Rath (Gregory Peck) tries to provide as much as he can for his young family, despite the limitations of his income. Tom's wife Betsy (Jennifer Jones), always trying to find new ways to make money, suggests they move from their Connecticut house into Tom's dead grandmother's mansion--an idea that later backfires when it's discovered that the mansion has been willed away from the Rath family. Tom's life is complicated still by his recurring flashbacks about the War, and the young girl he left behind (Marisa Pavan). Tom's boss, Ralph Hopkins (Fredric March) ended up destroying his own family for the very same values and ambitions that Tom is now striving for...can he help Tom avoid the same fate?
  
  It's such a treat seeing Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones, the violent young lovers of "Duel in the Sun", teamed again in this outstanding family drama. Their chemistry was outstanding. In the character of Tom Rath, Peck managed to convey all the frustrations, fears and aspirations of the average working man. Jennifer Jones compliments him well as Tom's wife. Fredric March adds lots of gravity and wisdom to his role of Tom's mentor, Ralph.
  
  THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT was truly producer Darryl Zanuck's prestige picture for 1956. Though at times the lush CinemaScope visuals clash with the intimate nature of the story, the production values are high and the entire film is a treat to behold. (Single-sided, dual-layer disc).
• Powerful 50's film still good today: I had heard about this film for years but never saw it. It is very much of its time--the 50's--post WWII when Americans were settling into prosperity. I had assumed that this would be about some man's climb upward in an ad agency or something. It is so much more than that. And although it describes perfectly the dilemmas of the time, the basic human elements are told so well that people today can surely relate to the film.
  
  Gregory Peck is his usual magnificent self. He is almost too handsome for the role but it helps to have someone so beautiful to watch for such a long film. Besides his looks and natural elegance, he reeks of character and integrity, which make us pull for him through the long haul. His "lapse" of marital fidelity is certainly shown in the most sympathetic way.
  
  Jennifer Jones, as his wife, was a little disappointing to me. It is mentioned elsewhere that she was nicer in the book. She is a complex character here in the film, who, at times seems selfish, shallow and materialistic, while, at other times, berates her husband for not having enough courage to tell the blunt truth to his boss (and thereby risk the steady income which she so desperately is counting on). I didn't find her particularly beautiful here, either, although she has been stunning in many of her other roles. In sum, she isn't as sympathetic a character as Peck's but perhaps she is that much more human. The 50's were a time of people wanting to forget the horrors and hardships of the war, rationing, and death and fell in love with refrigerators, cars, tvs and all the good things that money could buy.
  
  The script is intelligent and both sides of many issues are thoroughly played out. This may seem maddening and slow to some viewers who are used to faster action films withless dialogue, but I found it satisfying. In many of the scenes, such as the one where Peck discloses the fact of his war time affair to his wife, I could agree with each one of them, in turn.
  
  It is heartening to see a film tackle such moral issues and to show the difficulty most people face when trying to live a decent life.
  
  I enjoyed the costumes and especially the decor. So many film sets from the 50's show the tackier elements of the style of that era but some of these places---the offices and the Connecticut home of the boss's ex-wife were quite beautiful.
  
  The subplots of the boss' family problems and the problems with the inherited house were all interesting. The scenes in Italy were touching and charming. All in all this is a first class film, definitely worth watching.