Kind Hearts and Coronets

 

Long considered one of the best of the Ealing Comedies, Kind Hearts & Coronets is in many ways atypical of the studio's output. Instead of the usual warm comedy, contemporary setting and familiar cast of lower-middle class worthies, the film is set in the 1860s and shot through with pitch black humour and biting satire on both the moribund upper class and the grasping venality of the suburban middle class. A waspishly poised Dennis Price is Louis Mazzini whose mother was cast out from the aristocratic D'Ascoyne family for marrying an Italian opera singer. After her death and a series of provocations from his estranged relatives Louis embarks on a plan to murder his way into his inheritance, offing the D'Ascoyne heirs (all played with great relish by Alec Guinness) in a series of wonderfully absurd set pieces. Louis only finds his match in his childhood sweetheart from the suburbs, the vulgar and scheming Sibella (Joan Greenwood). [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]