Review of Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) by Mark B — 10 Feb 2011

The best and most loved of the Ealing Comedies is also the darkest. Kind Hearts and Coronets is probably most famous today as "that film in which Alec Guinness plays eight characters." That said, it is Denis Price as Louis Mazzini, the charming, urbane serial killer, who really steals the show.

The film opens in prison, with the Louis Mazzini D'Ascoyne, Ninth Duke of Chalfont awaiting execution for one of the few suspicious deaths in the film he wasn't responsible for. On that, his last night, he is completing his memoirs, which act as a framing device for the rest of the film, as well as allowing for a dry, witty narration from Mazzini himself.

Kind Hearts and Coronets is everything modern cinema is not. It is not laugh-out-loud comedy, but a biting wit that often leaves you wondering whether you should be laughing at all. The screenwriter takes seeming delight in the precision of the dialogue, with no unnecessary verbiage. This culminates in an astonishing minimalist performance from Price when he finds himself in the dock of the House of Lords, being tried by his peers.

I suppose you could look at Kind Hearts and Coronets as a form of social commentary. It was made after WWII, after the Beverage reforms, and may reflect a growing restlessness with the stuffiness of the old social order. Certainly, Louis is presented with such sympathy, and his nefarious endeavours told with such gleeful abandon that it is difficult for the audience not to identify with him.

You could regard it as a form of social commentary but, frankly, why bother? It's just glorious fun and, despite a certain English post-war feel, surprisingly modern and anarchic - there can be few films, even today, which cast a multiple murderer so firmly in the hero role. And there can be few modern films were the dialogue is so witty, for instance, when excusing his flustered state of mind after his first murder by saying "furthermore, I am not naturally callous".

Of course, everyone talks about Alec Guinness' acting tour de force - playing all eight other members of the D'Ascoyne family; from young Ascoyne D'Ascoyne to the hilariously named Elthelred D'Ascoyne (presumable unready for the fate that awaits him), the Eighth Duke of Chalfont. In reality, few of these characters receive more than a footnote in the film. But this is more than made up for by the splendid cast of other leading British actors - Denis Price, Valerie Hobson and Joan Greenwood being the notables.

This remains not only my favourite Ealing Comedy, but right up there with Dr Strangelove as one of my favourite comedy films ever made. A wonderful, heart-warming tale of multiple murder.