Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
Genre: Comedy / Crime
Duration: 106 minuten
Alternative title: Noblesse Oblige
Country:
United Kingdom
Directed by: Robert Hamer
Stars: Alec Guinness, Dennis Price and Joan Greenwood
IMDb score:
8,0 (41.791)
Releasedate: 21 June 1949
Kind Hearts and Coronets plot
"He chopped down the family tree..."
Louis Mazzini's mother belonged to a noble family, but she was disowned when she married an opera singer. Wanting to become the next duke of the family, Louis kills all other possible successors.
Actors and actresses
Louis Mazzini / His Father
Edith D'Ascoyne
Sibella
The D'Ascoyne Family: The Duke / The Banker / The Parson / The General / The Admiral / Young Ascoyne / Young Henry / Lady Agatha
Mama
The Hangman
The Prison Governor
Lionel Holland
Crown Counsel
Lord High Steward
Reviews & comments
Onderhond
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- 87623 messages
- 12890 votes
Pffft.
Can it get dustier than this? I'm actually wondering. You can hardly call it a film, it is mainly one big story with some random images. Everything, but everything is explained in great detail in this film. I got tired of it after a while.
Mainly because it's a pretty boring story. I read here that it should be a biting black comedy, I mainly see British stiffness with a small amoral edge. That is perhaps a bit magnified by the dullness of the rest of the film, but that can hardly be called positive.
It also takes quite a long time, where it is a fairly predictable film. Halfway through I had seen it again with this "classic", but apparently people liked to hear themselves speak in those days and it is all needlessly stretched. At least now I know where the term "talkies" comes from.
1.0*
Translated from Dutch · View original
Roger Thornhill
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- 6070 messages
- 2476 votes
Perhaps the most famous title in the entire extensive Ealing catalogue. Nowadays Kind hearts and coronets is probably mainly remembered for the gimmick of eight different roles by Alec Guinness, but what strikes me most when reviewing is the literary and flowery voice-over of the main character Louis Mazzini, one of the few times in which that artifice is not only useful, but also actually adds something. In the advertising campaign, most attention will have been paid to Guinness's eight-fold dressing up, but the film is still centered on Dennis Price, whose somewhat haughty facial expressions fit this role perfectly. "I am a second-rate feature actor. I am not a star and never was. I lack the essential spark," he is said to have once said about himself, and the rest of his 151-title filmography also contains few appealing movies, but at least for this movie he will be remembered anyway – I suppose the obituaries at his death in 1973 mentioned Kind hearts and coronets first (and perhaps only one), and rightly so. A film that floats through social strata, locations and characters, taking its time, but all that time well spent – this is not a film to flip through. For the gourmet.
Translated from Dutch · View original
Fisico
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- 10039 messages
- 5398 votes
Very fascinated watching this British crime classic. Well, the atmosphere of a crime movie is never present, although there are numerous eliminations. The film has a light-hearted to humorous approach and that in that typical British way. Genre still upper lip humor, stiff and satirical, but quite effective. It is perhaps not for nothing that Louis was just convicted of a murder for something that he just did not do, unlike all other murders that have not been addressed.
I also thought the voice-over was quite good and came into its own to frame the events or untangle Louis's train of thought. The dialogues were also strong and Price does an excellent job. Also nice to take a closer look at that high British society with a satirical look. The nice thing is that you have sympathy for the unfortunate Louis and you hope that little by little he will get closer to his goal, although not all obstacles were just annoying glands (the photographer or his employer, to name just two).
Translated from Dutch · View original
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