Male Look

This sardonic appraisal of the fashion choices available to men in 1950, reveals how to carry off a variety of unflattering looks, from terry cloth beach coats to platform shoes.

The suggestion that, in matters of fashion, women are dictators and men utterly hapless, sets the tone for this humorous, if superficial, report from March of Time. Taking the viewer from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the golf courses of Texas and the tailors of Savile Row, and concluding with a somewhat depressing look into the world of male girdles, desperate gym routines and hair-dyeing strategies, the end result is oddly downbeat, although the final reveal shot is worth waiting for.

Enjoyable in a superficial way, this film nonetheless reflects the decline in quality which affected the series in its latter years. Although the subject matter reflects producer Richard de Rochement’s genuine interest in clothes, the issue is sadly lacking in the journalistic substance and grit of previous excursions into the industry (such as the ‘Fashion Means Business’ issue from 1947), relying instead on cliches about disapproving wives and male vanity to generate some easy laughs.