Released just four years after the end of World War II, Kind Hearts and Coronets<\/em> was a product of England\u2019s famed Ealing Studios, at least in name. But fans of such light-hearted comedies as The Lavender Hill Mob<\/em> might be taken aback by the corrosive humor running through the film\u2019s veins. Hamer\u2019s script was based loosely on the 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal<\/em>, though the end result bears little resemblance to the self-conscious tone of its source material. Hamer relished the opportunity to write something that used the English language in a \u201cmore varied and, to me, more interesting way.\u201d There was also the appeal of \u201cmaking a picture which paid no regard whatever to established, although not practised, moral convention.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The key to the film\u2019s lacerating satire is the \u201calthough not practised\u201d portion of that phrase. Save one or two minor exceptions, there isn\u2019t a character in Kind Hearts and Coronets<\/em> whose exceedingly proper exterior doesn\u2019t conceal a rotten soul. The first of these we meet is Louis D\u2019Ascoyne Mazzini (played by a supercilious Dennis Price), who is sitting in a prison cell awaiting his imminent execution for murder. The majority of the plot is told in flashback as Louis recounts via his memoirs what brought him to this point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s <\/em>one of the rare cases where the use of voiceover proves indispensable: Louis isn\u2019t unreliable because he conceals his crimes from the audience. He\u2019s quite open, even dispassionate, about his plan to off the eight people in line ahead of him for a dukedom his late mother, exiled from the family for marrying a commoner, instilled in him as his birthright. He\u2019s unreliable because his priggish insistence on keeping himself above the fray blinds him to just how down in the muck he is. Every curl of his lip betrays a chilling entitlement but his truly fatal flaw is believing a gentleman is something you can become if you act the part well enough. The D\u2019Ascoynes of the world know you have to be born to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In an inspired bit of casting, Guinness plays all eight of the presumptive heirs in Louis\u2019s way, whether old or young, male or female, and takes an infectious glee in the slight differentiations in snobbery that each requires. There\u2019s Ascoyne D\u2019Ascoyne, a haughty (and adulterous) banker dispatched by an unmoored punt that Louis sends over a waterfall. There\u2019s General Rufus D\u2019Ascoyne, who is on the unlucky end of an explosive jar of caviar. And there\u2019s Lady Agatha D\u2019Ascoyne, a notorious suffragist, who is riding in a hot air balloon when Louis eliminates her. \u201cI shot an arrow in the air. She fell to earth in Berkeley Square,\u201d as he eloquently and succinctly puts it. Hamer may not be the most artful of directors but the bluntness with which he stages each murder only enhances their comedic sting.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether or not they\u2019re deserving of their fates is beside the point. In Hamer\u2019s acrid vision of high society, everyone is a hypocrite with a target on their back, Louis included. Here all misdeeds are flattened out so the prejudicial treatment of the poor is on the same par as cold-blooded murder. It\u2019s a ruthless view of the world, and one that wouldn\u2019t necessarily appeal to Britons recently traumatized by the horrors of the Nazi\u2019s Blitz campaign. Ealing Studios feared as much, but Kind Hearts and Coronets<\/em> proved to be a hit both in its homeland and abroad. Watching it seventy-five years on, Hamer\u2019s willingness to risk his audience\u2019s ire looks even more admirable. Like Louis\u2019s memoirs, there\u2019s also something confessional in it. Don\u2019t waste time becoming what you hate, Hamer counsels through his antihero\u2019s fate. One can only wonder what he\u2019d make of our ruling classes today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Kind Hearts and Coronets” is streaming on Kanopy<\/a> and available for digital rental or purchase<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/kind-hearts2-1024x577.png\")
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From the start, Hamer mines humor from the disconnect between the veneer of polite society and the ugly machinations that prop it up, particularly in Britain where class status is hardwired into the citizenry. \u201cA difficult client can make things most distressing,\u201d the executioner announces when he arrives at the prison before double checking to ensure he addresses the duke correctly (it\u2019s \u201cYour Grace\u201d). Louis, meanwhile, keeps an abridged family tree on the back of a painting of the D\u2019Ascoyne castle, ritualistically turning it over to cross out names as he makes his kills or \u2013 in the case of a lucky few \u2013 nature takes its course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n