The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

THE LAVENDER HILL MOB is the comedy that abounds extremely healthy humor. The humble bank employee after twenty years of service decided "serve" gold which he has been entrusted to transport, and that purpose devises and organizes perfectly clumsy and ridiculous robbery in which will help him a friend and several professional criminals.This is a movie that will help in the short term to lighten the mood. Here we do not talk about the bad guys, lawlessness, corruption and tolerance in man. The protagonists seem quite "drunken". One of them is quite calm and unobtrusive, the person who apparently would not hurt a fly, and yet the plan rather comical robbery and tremendous work in order to carry out his plan to the end. His friend was impatient and aggressive. They possess a strange propensity for giving up when things get awkward.It is interesting to see two completely different character in the same business. The robbery! Complications are comical and inevitable. Really top-notch entertainment, which offers plenty of British humor, a few funny chases and hilarious conflict in characters, so that pretty authentic location which is certainly surprising. I do not think that in any way making fun of someone or something. The acting is pretty good. Alec Guinness as Henry "Dutch" Holland and Stanley Holloway as Alfred "Al" Pendlebury They are skillful and highly entertaining in pairs. The ingenious and persistent against rash and cunning.

A million pounds in bullion is stolen from a British bank; the crooks successfully hide out in a foundry, melting the gold down and pouring it into molds for Eiffel Tower paperweights...but what happens when one little schoolgirl gets away with a souvenir and turns it over to the police? Sluggish and talk-heavy at the start, this comedic caper eventually becomes a breathless chase film, aided by the wonderfully 'light-fingered', light-headed team of Alec Guiness and Stanley Holloway. Their flight by foot from the actual Eiffel Tower is piece-of-genius filmmaking, while director Charles Crichton and screenwriter T. E. B. Clarke are adept at keeping the thieves affable...anti-heroes, as it were. "Mob" provided the virtual formula for many other heist pictures to follow, a genre wherein the audience is prodded to cheer for the criminals as if they were the good guys. This is acceptable here as a bright-eyed early example, with a first-rate cast and production. An added bonus: Audrey Hepburn, pre-"Roman Holiday", in a bit part as a grateful recipient of Guinness's affection. **1/2 from ****

Another awesome comedy from Ealing studios era. Movie is very simple crime comedy but the involvement of Alec Guinness leads it to an other level. He is a genius actor, there is no second thought about it. It is about some normal lawful folks with ambitions of better living. They are fed up with normal life and finally take a big step to change their life-style. The crime portion is not much of importance but the humor within it, behavior of characters and all the little things in the screenplay which makes it a remarkable one. Movie is very short in length and follows straight routine. It never stick to a particular point. It has lots of ironic things involved in it. And I just can't imagine a better ending. Stanley Halloway also delivers a good performance but the movie belongs to Guinness only. The best thing about this film is that it never looses its cool. And loved the dialogues. There is also Audrey Hepburn cameo in it.

Henry Holland is a milquetoast clerk in charge of gold bullion deliveries who harbours a secret dream to make off with a shipment. When by chance he meets Alfred Pendlebury, who owns a souvenir business with a small foundry, it seems providence has cast them together and the heist is on.One of Ealing Studios' most successful films - writer T.E.B. Clarke won an Oscar - this is a lovely, gentle reminder of a more innocent post-war age, where villains trusted each other with the loot and nobody got hurt. Its success for me is largely down to Guinness' mild-mannered charm as he alternates between meek predictability with his superiors and gleeful exuberance as his masterplan comes to fruition. The whimsy of scenes like the delirious whirling flight down the steps of the Eiffel Tower, where the camera seems to generate the giddy elated panic of the characters, are infectious and exhilarating and the story keeps us empathising with Holland right up to the amusing pathos of the ending. Everybody else is great too, and as with all of Ealing's work the quality of the filmmaking is top-notch. Douglas Slocombe's fluid camera-work is wonderful throughout, such as the big track-in on Holloway in the police station when he mistakenly thinks the game's up, and the clever editing by Seth Holt (who went on to edit and direct several interesting movies for Hammer Films) pulls all the comic potential out of the situations. There's also a great little score by Georges Auric. A great comic caper movie, beautifully directed by Crichton, who also made The Titfield Thunderbolt, A Fish Called Wanda and the very funny golfing episode in Dead Of Night. An interesting comic companion piece to the straight police drama The Blue Lamp, also written by Clarke. Look fast at the start for a very young Audrey Hepburn.