Kind Hearts and Coronets (1950)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

best movie i've ever seen.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

I first saw this film thirty years ago and loved it then, and saw it again last night and my opinion of it has changed in the interim. I realize the main character isn't supposed to be likable, but the idea that he somehow "deserves" a noble title ahead of anyone else in the family has modern-day echoes of certain members of the younger generation who feel entitled to unearned privileges, a concept I didn't find objectionable until I hit middle age. This creeping sense of uneasiness worsened during the scene where the main character meets the parson, a kindly but doddering old man surely not deserving of Mazzini's hatred. I suppose this concept might have its modern-day equivalent in films like Saw, but even then the victims somehow deserve their bloody fates. The film is redeemed of course by Guinness's incomparable performances, proving that he was every bit a chameleon as Peter Sellars.

I saw this on the TCM channel with the mother and it was the first time we ever seen this movie. Suppose it waited 68 years for us both to watch the film lol!Anyways I love the fact Alec McGuinness played the eight dukes who were about to be killed by Price's character. He was so unrecognised when he played each one, I thought there were different men that looked like him but nope, it was McGuiness all along! You know Dennis Price's character really stood out well as a closeted serial killer. He knows how to play the bad guy really really well and can do anything to surprise you in my opinion! I wished in the end, we could see if he was caught or not, when his memoirs which provides evidence claiming he killed all the dukes and were found out by the police. But definitely its a good film to waste time on!

KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS is very tasty and satirical film. I will not be so much heed to the black humor, which is certainly present. I will describe as mentioned skilled British satire. Well, the film's main protagonist is a murderer. The secondary protagonist is each of the eight victims.Alec Guinness as eight members of the D'Ascoyne family: Ethelred "the Duke", Lord Ascoyne "the Banker", Reverend Lord Henry "the Parson", General Lord Rufus "the General", Admiral Lord Horatio "the Admiral", Young Ascoyne, Young Henry and Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne. He also plays the seventh duke in brief flashback sequences to Mama's youth. I do not want all the credit rewrite to him. Performance is unusual. Some roles are short, but they are quite impressive.The dialogues are perfect, in every moment you expect a gruesome joke. Impoverished and humiliated young man kills all your relatives (almost all), so that inherited wealth and the ducal title. There is a reason. However, the killings are so clumsy and humorous, and therefore the reason it sounds frivolous. This film for general wonder lack inspiration. I'll explain. I do not think anything bad. This movie can serve as an inspiration with with anything. After the film, remains a void in which extinguishes a slight smile. The narrative is a constant, monotonous and reminiscent of the confession.It is interesting how everything works with elegantly and flawlessly. Often you can fall into the trap and think that all of this is true.Dennis Price as Louis Mazzini is a young man, who made a entertains scheme of his own kills. Dennis Price in this role seems quite skillfully. His play with women is much more interesting. After all, can continue indefinitely.The story can be seen as a kind of contempt for the society in which they are pranks, lies and kills some kind of justification. However, great humor and satirical performances give the film a completely different picture.

One of the things I noticed on my first watch of Robert Hamer's Kind Hearts and Coronets (from the studio that later brought you The Ladykillers), is that it aims and achieves for much more than it could have. This could have been just a silly comedy about an ambitious man trying to reach his way to the top of the Duke-dom - specifically with the D'Ascoyne family, all played by Alec Guinness by the way - and it might have some edge to it but would be more about the funny make-up and outfits that Guinness puts on. But what makes it more is that there is a real film here, and attention is paid to supporting characters - especially the women, and another man named Lionel who will prove to be a big part of the plot - and it has the underlying air of a film noir: a criminal, the dames in his life, and narration leading the viewer along on the way.At the same time, Kind Hearts is a raucous satire of the upper class and nobility, and what it means to have privilege and status in society. Dennis Price plays Louis as a man who is nearly always with the utmost, upright character. He may be half Italian and half the son of an Italian singer (who, as we learn, dropped dead of a heart attack before he really knew him), but everything in his actions as he goes one by one in killing most of the D'Ascoynes is that of a complete gentlemen. If he wasn't so fervent about rising to the top in his calculating and homicidal manner, he might make for a great (if strict) teacher of manners for school-boys... which is part of the point: this is a society that prides manners, good speaking, poise, fashionable dress, and even Price's accent is just right. If he had the bad luck of being raised Cockney, he'd never make it through the front door of the Duke's home.Guinness is a performer-genius, and this is one of the films that shows that with riotous effect. Some of the characters may not even get much screen time, like the Admiral who goes down with the ship by going Port instead of Starbord (not one of Louis' victims, but what a way to go), or the Lady D'Ascoyne, who meets maybe the funniest end as she flies over the people promoting Women's rights in a hot air balloon (it shouldn't be funny, promoting women's rights, but when it's Guinness in a dress waving to the public, I'm sorry, I lost it). Maybe my favorite of his creations is the religious man, The Parson, who is one of the older figures, slow and yet loving to ramble and drag things along about the D'Ascoyne legacy in the church he works at, and watch as he is under no impression of fakery listening to Louis reciting some obscure language. Guinness may not look like it, but he's having the time of his life with these roles, going so far as to change his height when necessary, and it's surprising to see what he'll show up as next.In the more straightforward part of the story, this too is solid and goes along with the satirical part, if a little more leaning towards a conventional story. There's the two women in his life - one of them, a D'Ascoyne wife (soon to be ex), is actually admirable and attractive to Louis. It's interesting to see how our (anti)hero sees other people and actually does have respect for them (the one member of the family who dies of stroke he admits "glad" to have not had to kill), perhaps because they share the same upstanding manner of him, or have a sense of dignity in his warped perspective. Hobson is Edith, the (ex)D'Ascoyne, and is a pleasure to see on screen opposite Louis. The other woman is one who fancies him more than he does her, Sibella (Greenwood), maybe more of the 'femme fatale' of the story. She may have some level of dignity, but it's below Louis' standards, whatever those they may be. How she comes around at the end, however, is one of the more clever twists in all movies. I mean, ever.So much of Kind Hearts and Coronets is based upon the droll manner that becomes English society, specifically the 'noble' class, or even those who may be closer to "working" like the Photographer who imbibes in secret in his development room. In some ways this would make a good double feature with Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux, also about a murderous character we grow to kinda love while also about class, but perhaps an even better comparison is with The Rules of the Game by Renoir. Deep down this is cunning, savage work on how for centuries the British have seen themselves, and I have to think this could only be done, at least this way, from the UK. We all know Royalty gets it way too good, they're up at the top, so a movie like this is practically necessary - a beautiful, cynical, and a dastardly tonic for everyone not of royalty, and right after WW2 to boot (though, who knows, maybe they love it as well, if only in secret).A lot of this is funny, but even if it's not it's captivating stuff. Even the "Villain Monologue" trope is not only acceptable but riveting.