Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
my favourite film, 10 Feb 2009
"Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood." - from the 1842 poem "Lady Clara Vere de Vere" by Alfred Lord Tennyson
This is one of the great Ealing comedies. A truly great family film, which is both funny and profound.
Released in 1950 and staring the late, great and extremely underrated Dennis Price as Louis Mazzini and Alec Guinness as all 8 members of the D'Ascoyne family.
His quest was to extract revenge for the treatment of his mother by the D'Ascoyne family. His mother, a member of the D'Ascoyne family, had married for love not for status or money and was therefore disowned. After her death she was refused burial in the family crypt and this was the tipping point for Louis. He decides that the only way to get revenge is to become the Duke. Unfortunately for Louis there are 8 other D'Ascoynes in the way, he must dispose of them all before he can become Duke.
This is my favourite film, it is the one that I come back to time after time, because of this I highly recommend this film.
Oh, and my favourite line is: "It is so difficult to make a neat job of killing people with whom one is not on friendly terms." It tells you so much about the tone of the film. Enjoy.
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19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a lovely film - uniquely intelligent, 25 April 2007
This is one of the classic Ealing comedies which lingers long in the memory and leaves a very happy aftertaste. It is unique because of Alec Guinness's tour de force in personifying all the D'Ascoignes, but it has many other virtues too - the suave and solid work of Dennis Price and of Valerie Hobson, beautiful and remote with just a hint of earthy lustfulness, and Joan Greenwood, much more worldly and playful and every bit as characterful. The screenplay is full of intelligence - I have always enjoyed the superannuated parson's description of his frescoes as having 'all of the vigour of Chaucer with none of his concomitant crudity' - and the plot is neat and clever, with the irony of Price's downfall resulting from the one death he was not responsible for and then, when all seems well after all, the strong hint that it may not be.
I've seen the film a number of times and it always gives delight. It is one film which fully justifies the epithet 'well-liked', and that is just what it deserves to be.
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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Revenge is a dish the people of taste prefer to eat cold, 13 Feb 2007
"Kind hearts are more than coronets/And simple faith than Norman blood. - Lord Tennyson."
Tennyson could have been writing about the movie "Kind Hearts and Coronets," a wonderfully twisted movie all about killing one's relatives to get ahead in the world. This classic black comedy is blessed with excellent acting by Dennis Price and Alec Guinness, as well as some very inventive murders and wry dialogue.
A young lady of the D'Ascoyne family was ostracized when she married an Italian singer (he dropped dead when their son was born). Louis (Price) was raised hearing all about his noble relatives, but ignored by them -- and when his mother is refused burial at the family plot, and his devious girlfriend Sibella (Joan Greenwood) spurns him for a rich, dull man, he decides to become the next Duke.
To do that, he has to kill off several relatives, which he does in various ingenious ways. He's also wooing the widow of one such murdered relative, the kindly Edith (Valerie Hobson), while still frisking with Sibella. But you can't commit six murders -- no matter how clever -- without raising some suspicions, and soon Louis finds himself a Duke on death row... but is there a way out?
The whole story is told in flashback, as Louis writes his memoirs in his cell, and there's only a little bit after the memoirs' completion that explains what happened next. But from the first moments onward (the executioner getting excited about the "privilege" of hanging a duke), it's pretty obvious that "Kind Hearts and Coronets" has a rare, wicked sense of humor.
Much of that is through the irony (Louis is morally opposed to hunting, but not murder) and brilliantly dark dialogue ("I shot an arrow in the air; she fell to earth in Berkeley Square"). One of the best things is Louis' narration -- we learn that he's intelligent, droll, and as much of a snob as his richer relatives.
But there's also the great ways in which the D'Ascoynes expire -- exploding labs, drifting boats, shooting down a hot air balloon with an arrow, and a battleship that goes the wrong way and crashes into ANOTHER battleship. A string of murders might normally be dull, but Robert Hamer keeps the wry humor in everything Louis does.
Price does a simply brilliant job as Louis, a poor relation who uses charm, intelligence, pleasant lies, kindness and some disguises to murder his relatives (many of whom are much kindlier than he). Only crackly-voiced Greenwood is as wonderfully amoral as he. And Guinness showed his versatility by playing all the D'Ascoyne relatives -- the dotty vicar, a rather ugly suffragette, a pigheaded admiral, and others.
"Kind Hearts and Coronets" is a brilliantly dark comedy, with some great acting from Guinness and Price, a twisted sense of humor, and a great finale. Definitely a must-see for fans of murder and wit.
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