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Rating:  -
DVD - Starz/Anchor Entertainment - Crisp video and audio. Just thinking about this film still makes me chuckle and shake my head. I first saw "Kind Hearts and Coronets" several years ago on TCM. My jaw dropped! Wonderful performances, a story-line to die for, solid entertainment! As for special features we've the Alec Guiness bio - in forward flip the pages and read style - but it was interesting. Wonderful film!
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This is one of the movies I have most enjoyed in my entire life. Every single detail is so witty and so incredibly funny, that there is not a single second you don't enjoy. Alec G. is simply perfect.
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This is a highly entertaining black comedy about an illegitimate heir (Dennis Price) who tries to bump off eight relatives (all played by Alec Guinness) who stand in the way of him becoming a Duke. It's a very clever story with an imaginative twist at the end. Guinness is brilliant in his galaxy of roles.
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I can only comment on the movie itself for I don't own it as of yet but I've seen it more than a dozen times on the big screen and the telly. Having seen it so many times I know there are no issues about the quality of prints available to Criterion and considering the kind of job they do in general it will undoubtly be exceptionally fine viewing.
It's sad to think that most of today's audience only know the late Sir Alec Guinness as Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi it being one of, if not the most, mundane of his screen roles. He despised it even though his two points made him very well off. It was not one of the roles for which he was knighted.
His performance in Kind Hearts and Coronets was most certainly one the elements behind his knighthood. It was a loving but most pointed jab at English aristocracy. He played the eight members of the D'Ascoyne family targeted by Louis Mazzini-D'Ascoyne. The eight performances are beautifully drawn and establish each character in amazing brevity. As each are introduced they are almost immediately "dispatched" so to have each be so well developed in such a short time is a real achievement and testament to Guinness' acting genius.
Dennis Price plays Louis in a beautifully understated performance. His mother is a descendant of the D'Ascoynes but is no longer recognized by the family as one due to her marriage to an Italian singer, which is viewed to be beneath her station. Thus, she and their subsequent issue, Louis, are estranged from their aristocratic lineage. Louis' mother does not take it to heart and schools Louis in all finery and manners that would have been due him. She makes sure he understands that he a person of position. When she passes her only wish is to be interred in the family crypt. When Louis inquires to the Duke as to his mother's wish he is rudely rebuffed. At this Louis decides to claim his right of birth, the Dukedom of Chalfont. Only eight things stand in his way and they're all played by Alec Guinness. Never has a mass murderer ever been so charmingly cool.
There is a wide array of deaths befitting Guinness' wide array of characterizations. Considering the subject matter, it is all very mannered and draws a substantial amount of its humor from this paradox. It easily makes my top 100 comedies but far more importantly has been honored by Time's 100 all time greatest and the same from BFI. Over the years it may have loss some of its blackness but none of its irony or humor. All the elements supporting cast, score and all technical aspects are unquestionably top drawer. Simply put this is one of the finest films ever made.
I went to Wikipedia to help write this review and found they reviewed it from beginning to the very end with zero concern about spoiling it for anyone who may not have seen it. Be forewarned about this or any other movie you may look up on Wikipedia.
Boom, boom, boom.
Rating: -
There's one way to eliminate the problem of family resemblance in a movie: use a single actor to portray the entire family. From the young to the old, women and men, wise and foolish, vain and comely. The amazing Alec Guinness pulls this off with panache in "Kind Hearts and Coronets." Though his performances radiate brilliance, they by no means remain the sole focal point of this macabre Victorian-era comedy. Dennis Price, as the noble and dignified serial killer Louis Mazzini, deserves as much credit as Guinness for making this movie one of Ealing Studio's most acclaimed. Not to mention the sizzling women, Joan Greenwood and Valerie Hobson, who get caught, and do some plotting themselves, between the character's cross-ambitions.
The film opens with Louis Mazzini writing and dialoguing his memoirs from prison. He awaits execution for murder. How did a Duke arrive in such an unseemly state? He begins with his mother, who married for love and was thus ousted from the elite D'Ascoyne family, a Dukedom with royal lineage. After his mother's death (his father had suffered a cornary the moment he set eyes on Louis in swaddling clothes), Louis vows revenge on her family and gradually plays out his murderous desires. One by one all of the roles so masterfully played by Guinness succumb to Louis's plots. In parallel, his childhood love, Sibella, refuses his hand in marriage and announces that she's to marry his old rival, Lionel. This fuels Louis's plots and he at last obtains his denied title. The wife of one of the murdered, Edith D'Ascoyne, accepts Louis's offer of marriage, but soon after he finds himself charged with the murder of Sibella's husband. It becomes clear that Sibella plans to blackmail Louis. Her false testimony, in front of the House of Lords, of course, lands him in jail for one of the few deaths in the film that he did not bring about. The day of the execution Sibella visits Louis and makes him an offer he can't refuse: she will expose her husband's hidden suicide note and prove Louis's innocence. In return he must murder his wife. That little schemer - and what's up with those hats? On the way out of prison Louis sees two carriages, one containing his legal wife, the other containing Sibella, his lover. Then he remembers his memoirs. Didn't he leave them in his cell? Don't they reveal everything? Ealing Studios always places a memorable twist in the last few seconds of their films. This one resonates, as does the horrific treatment many of the characters dish out to each other in the name of "social advancement."
Fans of Alec Guinness will find much to applaud here, but don't let his mesmerizing performances distract from the totality of one of Ealing Studio's finest productions.
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