Other Titles • Kind Hearts and Coronets • Adel verpflichtet (1957)
Synopses for Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
1.
Director Robert Hamer’s fiendishly funny Kind Hearts and Coronets stands as one of Ealing Studios’ greatest triumphs, and one of the most wickedly black comedies ever made. Dennis Price is sublime as an embittered young commoner determined to avenge his mother’s unjust disinheritance by ascending to the dukedom. Unfortunately, eight family members—all played by the incomparable Alec Guinness—must be eliminated before he can do so.
2.
KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS is a deft and dark comedy with Guinness in superb form as he plays eight different members of the D'Ascoyne clan. Louis (Dennis Price), the black sheep of the wealthy family, must murder all the heirs in order to inherit the D'Ascoyne fortune. Watch as the brilliant Guinness disappears into his various eccentric roles.
3.
Sir Alec Guinness became an international star with his extraordinary performance as eight different characters in this 1949 Ealing Studios classic. Dennis Price co-stars as Edwardian gentleman Louis Mazzini who plots to avenge his mother's death by seizing the dukedom of the aristocratic d'Ascoyne family. But to gain this inheritance, Mazzini must first murder the line of eccentric relatives who stand between him and the title, including General d'Ascoyne, Admiral d'Ascoyne, The Duke Of Chalfont, Lady Agatha d'Ascoyne and four more, all brilliantly portrayed by Guinness and leading to one of the most delicious final twists in comedy history.
4.
Set in Victorian England, Robert Hamer's 1949 masterpiece Kind Hearts and Coronets remains the most gracefully mordant of Ealing Comedies. Dennis Price plays Louis D'Ascoyne, the would-be Duke of Chalfont whose Mother was spurned by her noble family for marrying an Italian singer for love. Louis resolves to murder the several of his relatives ahead of him in line for the Dukedom, all of whom are played by Alec Guinness, in order to avenge his Mother--for, as Louis observes, " revenge is a dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold". He gets away with it, only to be arraigned for the one murder of which he is innocent. Guinness' virtuoso performances have been justly celebrated, ranging as they do from a youthful D'Ascoyne concealing his enthusiasm for public houses from his priggish wife ("she has views on such places") to a brace of doomed uncles and one aunt, ranging from the doddery to the peppery. Miles Malleson is a splendid doggerel-spouting hangman, while Valerie Hobson and Joan Greenwood take advantage of unusually strong female roles. But the great joy of Kind Hearts and Coronets is the way in which its appallingly black subject matter (considered beyond the pale by many critics at the time) is conveyed in such elegantly ironic turns of phrase by Dennis Price's narrator/anti-hero. Serial murder has never been conducted with such exquisite manners and discreet charm. --David Stubbs
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