THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT

 There's an awful lot of plot to get through in Nunnally Johnson's slick, long (153 minutes), highly melodramatic screen version of Sloan Wilson's bestseller "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit". It's a Darryl F. Zanuck production made for Fox in Cinemascope and colour in the mid-fifties. The kind of 'big' picture designed to bring people back to the cinema in the blossoming age of television and it's certainly a handsome looking movie though not a very good one.

Gregory Peck is his customary wooden self as the man in question, a former soldier haunted by his actions in the war, (including fathering a child with Marisa Pavan), and now working on Madison Avenue where his integrity is further tested. Fredric March is his boss, a decent man with problems of his own and as was so often the case with March, he walks off with the movie. There's a large supporting cast, none of whom are given much to do, and as I said it does go on a bit. It's not dull exactly despite Peck's best efforts to make it so and while it was a hit at the time it was ignored by the Academy and hasn't been seen much since.