'The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit' could have been a great film. Gregory Peck is always worth watching, the set design is exquisite (like a Douglas Sirk movie), and there's a decent story here, but Nunnally Johnson's direction is slack and plodding beyond belief--153 minutes of mostly unrelieved tedium. Almost every scene is glacially paced and runs on for way too long. Exacerbating matters is the incredibly static camera work (no close-ups, no shot-reverse shots, no tracking shots; no pans; no nothing--just lots of loosely framed two-shots of people in interminable conversation and cheesy process shots of folks in autos). Trimmed by 45 minutes or so and directed by a more dynamic director, 'Man' could have been an exciting melodrama instead of a snooze-fest.
Review of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
