Kind Hearts and Coronets
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| Kind Hearts and Coronets | |
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| Directed by | Robert Hamer |
| Produced by | Michael Balcon Michael Relph |
| Written by | Robert Hamer John Dighton from the novel by Roy Horniman |
| Starring | Dennis Price Valerie Hobson Joan Greenwood Alec Guinness |
| Music by | Ernest Irving |
| Cinematography | Douglas Slocombe |
| Distributed by | General Film Distributors |
| Release date(s) | June 1949 (UK release) |
| Running time | 106 min. |
| Country |  United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Kind Hearts and Coronets is a 1949 British comedy film produced by Ealing Studios.
The script was directed by Robert Hamer, written by John Dighton and Hamer, and very loosely based on a book, Israel Rank, by Roy Horniman. The title is a quotation from Tennyson's 1842 poem Lady Clara Vere de Vere, which proclaims that "Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood."
The film stars Dennis Price as a potential heir to a Dukedom, but eight members of the D'Ascoyne family stand in his way. All eight (one female) are played by Alec Guinness. Guinness is also depicted in a painting of a family ancestor. There are also notable performances from Valerie Hobson and Joan Greenwood as a femme fatale. A young Arthur Lowe has a brief appearance at the end.
The film is generally regarded as the one of the best made by Ealing Studios and appears on the Time magazine top 100 list as well as on the BFI Top 100 British films list. In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Kind Hearts and Coronets the 25th greatest comedy film of all time. In 2004 the same magazine named it the 7th greatest British film of all time.
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[edit] Synopsis
Louis Mazzini (Price) is the son of a woman ostracised by her noble family for eloping with an Italian opera singer. Upon her death, the D'Ascoynes refuse to allow her to be buried in the family crypt. As a result, Louis plots revenge, aiming to succeed to the Dukedom of Chalfont, but eight relatives are ahead of him in line for the title.
Louis sets out to murder them all, in various inventive and blackly humorous ways. He manages to dispatch six of them. The other two die without his "assistance": his kindly banker employer, who dies of a stroke when he learns that he has inherited the dukedom, and Admiral D'Ascoyne, who obstinately steers his warship into a collision with another, and remains saluting on the bridge while it sinks beneath him (satirising the sinking of HMS Victoria in 1893). [1]
Complications ensue when Louis is torn between two women, Sibella (Greenwood), his longtime sensual paramour, and the more refined Edith D'Ascoyne (Hobson), the widow of one of his victims. The former becomes jealous of the latter. When Sibella's dull husband Lionel (John Penrose) kills himself, she hides the suicide note and, ironically, Louis ends up being tried and convicted of murdering one of the few people he didn't dispatch.
In prison awaiting execution, he writes his memoirs, detailing his exploits. Sibella has a change of heart and "finds" the suicide note, saving Louis. Exiting the prison gates, Louis finds two carriages awaiting him: in one, the forgiving Edith, and in the other, the seductively dangerous Sibella. While trying to choose between them, a publisher approaches him, requesting the rights to publish his memoirs; he suddenly remembers leaving his self-incriminating manuscript in his cell.
[edit] Difference from the novel
Louis' father in the novel was Jewish rather than Italian. Horniman had been accused of anti-Semitism, so the film-makers decided to play safe by changing his background.
[edit] Cast
- Dennis Price as Louis Mazzini and Mazzini's father.
- Alec Guinness as The Duke, The Banker, The Parson, The General, The Admiral, Young Ascoyne, Young Henry and Lady Agatha.
- Alec Guinness said that he was originally offered the parts of only four D'Ascoynes. "I read [the screenplay] on a beach in France, collapsed with laughter on the first page, and didn't even bother to get to the end of the script," he recounts. "I went straight back to the hotel and sent a telegram saying, 'Why four parts? Why not eight!?'"[2]
- Valerie Hobson as Edith.
- Joan Greenwood as Sibella.
- John Penrose as Lionel.
[edit] Quotes
The film is memorable for its witty, yet subtle repartée:
Sibella [sobbing]: Oh Louis! I don't want to marry Lionel!
Louis: Why not?
Sibella: He's so dull.
Louis: I must admit he exhibits the most extraordinary capacity for middle age that I've ever encountered in a young man of twenty-four.
Sibella [referring to Lionel]: He says he wants to go to Europe to expand his mind.
Louis: He certainly has room to do so.
Louis: Did you enjoy your honeymoon?
Sibella [matter-of-factly]: Not at all.
Louis [faintly surprised]: Not at all?
Sibella [definitely]: Not at all.
Other memorable lines include:
Reverend Lord Henry d'Ascoyne: ...I always say that my West Window has all the exuberance of Chaucer without, happily, any of the concomitant crudities of his period.
There are also a number of droll voice-overs from Mazzini. He despatches the first D'Ascoyne over a weir in the company of a girl with whom he, D'Ascoyne, had been enjoying an illicit weekend in Maidenhead.
Louis: I was sorry about the girl, but found some relief in the reflection that she had presumably, during the weekend, already undergone a fate worse than death...
And when he shoots down Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne's balloon while she is distributing suffragette leaflets over London, he reworks a Longfellow couplet to suit the occasion:
Louis: I shot an arrow in the air, she fell to earth in Berkeley Square.
[edit] Trivia
Chalfont, the family home of the d'Ascoynes, is Leeds Castle [3] in Kent, England.
