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4711 views since 7th Feb 2010

Kind Hearts and Coronets
- favourite film

If not our greatest comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets surely must be our top black comedy, in spite of some terrible sets and clunking matte shots. The humour is waspish, the subject amoral: the eradication of numerous family members standing between an outsider and a dukedom. Dennis Price plays Louis Mazzini, whose aristocratic mother eloped with an opera singer. He seeks revenge for her rejection in life, and exclusion from the family vault in death, by becoming a serial killer - though a charming, witty and engaging one. Price is louche, cool, handsome and elegant. But the star is Alec Guinness . His two previous film roles were limiting, playing well-known Dickensian characters: in Kind Hearts he gets to play eight different members of the D’Ascoyne clan, young and old, men and women. It made his name, and showed the gift for comedy he exploited in other Ealing pictures. Aspiring actors would do well to study the different walks which delineate each character. For those who have not seen the film, I won’t reveal the end, but can promise the British finale has a twist within a twist – the American version had to be edited to excise the ambiguity in accordance with the censorship code then in force in the land of the free. For a 1949 film the sexual undertones are unexpectedly clear, making the most of the purring Joan Greenwood . The cast even includes the bonus of a 34-year-old Arthur Lowe , enough to validate any film.

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