Instead of the usual warm comedy, contemporary setting and familiar cast of lower-middle class worthies, 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' is set in the 1860s and shot through with pitch black humor and biting satire on both the moribund upper class and the grasping venality of the suburban middle class.
A waspishly poised Dennis Price plays Louis Mazzini whose mother was cast out from the aristocratic D'Ascoyne family for marrying an Italian opera singer. After her death and a series of provocations from his estranged relatives - mainly their refusal to let her be buried at Chalfont in the D'Ascoyne family crypt, Louis embarks on a plan to murder his way into his inheritance, knocking off eight D'Ascoyne heirs (all played with great relish by Alec Guinness) one by one, in a series of wonderfully absurd set pieces - even polishing off one of his kinsmen, a windy general, by putting dynamite in his caviar. Louis only finds his match in his childhood sweetheart from the suburbs, the vulgar and scheming Sibella. Matters get complicated when he falls in love with Hobson, the widow of one of his victims. But after Price ascends to the dukedom and marries Hobson, fate catches up and something startling ensues.
In this delicious little satire on Edwardian manners and morals, the sly and adroit Mr. Guinness plays eight Edwardian fuddy-duds with such devastating wit and variety that he naturally dominates the film. He scores an eightfold tour de force as every member – young, old, male, female – of the D'Ascoyne clan, adding an additional masterstroke to the ruthlessly pitched satire about British imperialism backfiring on itself. He's aptly matched by Dennis Price as the Byronic anti-hero, who coolly undertakes a monstrous scheme of killing off all his kinfolk in order to succeed to the family coronet.
But don't let this obvious admiration for the leads obscure the fact that the picture itself is a sparkling, devilishly cutting jest. Robert Hamer's poised direction chimes perfectly with his Edwardian setting. He directs the script as a story being narrated as the recollections of a candid scoundrel - the Wildean wit of Price's voice-over an unfailing delight - and the whole development of the scoundrel's calculated career - in this case, of civilized murder - is described in the finest spirit of Gallic wit. Such a story of unmitigated contempt for the fundamental laws or society could only be tolerable when played as a spoof - a spoof on the highest level of cultivated humor and device.
The result, Kind Hearts and Coronets, is one of those films that can be seen repeatedly and still offer surprises. As a combination of rollicking black humor and satirical pokes at the English upper crust, nothing else comes close.
A waspishly poised Dennis Price plays Louis Mazzini whose mother was cast out from the aristocratic D'Ascoyne family for marrying an Italian opera singer. After her death and a series of provocations from his estranged relatives - mainly their refusal to let her be buried at Chalfont in the D'Ascoyne family crypt, Louis embarks on a plan to murder his way into his inheritance, knocking off eight D'Ascoyne heirs (all played with great relish by Alec Guinness) one by one, in a series of wonderfully absurd set pieces - even polishing off one of his kinsmen, a windy general, by putting dynamite in his caviar. Louis only finds his match in his childhood sweetheart from the suburbs, the vulgar and scheming Sibella. Matters get complicated when he falls in love with Hobson, the widow of one of his victims. But after Price ascends to the dukedom and marries Hobson, fate catches up and something startling ensues.
In this delicious little satire on Edwardian manners and morals, the sly and adroit Mr. Guinness plays eight Edwardian fuddy-duds with such devastating wit and variety that he naturally dominates the film. He scores an eightfold tour de force as every member – young, old, male, female – of the D'Ascoyne clan, adding an additional masterstroke to the ruthlessly pitched satire about British imperialism backfiring on itself. He's aptly matched by Dennis Price as the Byronic anti-hero, who coolly undertakes a monstrous scheme of killing off all his kinfolk in order to succeed to the family coronet.
But don't let this obvious admiration for the leads obscure the fact that the picture itself is a sparkling, devilishly cutting jest. Robert Hamer's poised direction chimes perfectly with his Edwardian setting. He directs the script as a story being narrated as the recollections of a candid scoundrel - the Wildean wit of Price's voice-over an unfailing delight - and the whole development of the scoundrel's calculated career - in this case, of civilized murder - is described in the finest spirit of Gallic wit. Such a story of unmitigated contempt for the fundamental laws or society could only be tolerable when played as a spoof - a spoof on the highest level of cultivated humor and device.
The result, Kind Hearts and Coronets, is one of those films that can be seen repeatedly and still offer surprises. As a combination of rollicking black humor and satirical pokes at the English upper crust, nothing else comes close.