Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2291 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-11-13
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Formats: Black & White, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 102 minutes

Synopsis
An Ealing Studio classic, KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS is a deft and dark Edwardian comedy with Alec Guinness in superb form as he plays eight different members of the D'Ascoyne clan. In order to inherit the entire D'Ascoyne fortune, the suave, dashing black sheep of the wealthy family, Louis (Dennis Price) must murder all the other heirs. Watch as the brilliant Guinness disappears into his various eccentric roles.

Customer Reviews

Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow!

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.

Deliciously dark
This comedy of class aspirations versus class hatred revolves around a fiendish plot based upon a wheel of fortune framework. The darkness of the humour is the overriding factor which keeps us watching this drawn out tale. Dennis Price gives a convincing performance of cold and calculating ambition, and Joan Greenwood gives her best rendition of a spoilt, petulent upper class femme fatal who's faintly mad. All of Guiness' characters add to the darkness of the humour, and round we go the wheel of fortune from Price's low beginnings, reaching a peak, and back down to an unenviable position at the end. Well conceived and very well performed, my only grumble is there were a few too many spokes in the wheel. The list of heirs he had to bump off was too long to be believable, even for a comedy, and the longer it went on, the more predictable and less enticing it became. For this reason, it misses becoming my own favourite Ealing comedy, though I can see why it's the favourite of many others.

58 and still hugely enjoyable
There must be a lot of film fans out there who have no time for anything which is more than a few years old and this is a great shame because so many old films have retained their brilliance over long periods of time. Without entering a long discourse on my feelings towards what passes as brilliance in todays diet of pap, enough to say that Kind Hearts and Coronets, at 58 years old, still has the power to entertain.

Although packaged as comedy, it probably won't have you rolling in the aisles but you may be hard pushed to not watch it with a big grin on your face from start to finish. It's completely charming and much of this charm has been amplified by the passage of time: no special effects here, just the odd painted backdrop and some beautiful locations in late forties rural England, all beautifully shot by Douglas Slocombe, whose CV is nothing short of impressive (check out Indiana Jones).

The performances here are beautifully judged. Alec Guinness, despite having considerable screen time in the guise of various characters, does not have the lead role but is exceptionally versatile. The lead goes to Dennis Price, as a charming but caddish (serial?) killer who generates a strong chemistry with the two leading ladies, Joan Greenwood and Valerie Hobson. John Penrose pulls off a remarkably convincing drunk act too.

The film teeters a little two thirds of the way through but soon recovers and then sets off in a slightly different direction and you may well find yourself thinking 'Oh no', before Louis does, but this matters not a bit. For me though, it's real strength lies in the dialogue which is both witty and poetic. And charming. See it and fall in love.