Director: Robert Hamer
Produced by: Michael Balcon and Michael Relph
Production Company: Ealing Studios
Distributed by: General Film Distributors
Screenplay: Robert Hamer and John Dighton
Adapted from the 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal
by Roy Horniman
Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe
Original Score: Ernest Irving
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) is the most delicious confection ever produced by Michael Balcon and Michael Relph’s Ealing Studios, and it remains my favorite British film. Robert Hamer’s exquisitely intelligent, razor‑dry direction—paired with the screenplay he co‑wrote with John Dighton (The Man in the White Suit, Roman Holiday)—flows like dark chocolate over a perfectly constructed sundae.
Dennis Price and Joan Greenwood
At its center is the sublimely urbane Dennis Price as Louis Mazzini, a lowly draper’s assistant who discovers he is distantly in line for a dukedom. Enraged by the aristocratic D’Ascoyne family’s cruel treatment of his mother—she eloped with a mere musician—Louis becomes a serial killer of the most elegant variety, systematically eliminating all eight D’Ascoynes who stand between him and the title of Duke of Chalfont, up to and including the sitting 8th Duke, Ethelred.
Alec Guinness
Alec Guinness, of course, has the time of his life playing all nine D’Ascoynes. In a brief flashback involving the elopement of Louis’s parents, he even appears as the 7th Duke—giving us three generations and both sexes, each rendered with a sly, affectionate mockery of Edwardian upper‑class professions and pretensions. By the time Louis is employed by the banker Lord Ascoyne D’Ascoyne—the first of his casualties—the banker’s son, Young Ascoyne, has already died in a boating accident.
The names of Louis’ victims and their method of dispatch are as follows:
Ethelred D’Ascoyne, 8th Duke of Chalfont (hunting accident)
The Reverend Lord Henry D’Ascoyne (poisoned)
The General, Lord Rufus D’Ascoyne (bomb)
The Admiral, Lord Horatio D’Ascoyne. (Goes down with his ship)
Louis’s employer and the final victim is the banker, Lord Ascoyne D’Ascoyne. He dies of shock on learning that he is the last D’Ascoyne standing.
Lady Agatha D’Ascoyne, Ethelred’s sister, is a militant lesbian suffragette whom Louis shoots down from her warm air balloon while she is distributing leaflets over London.
HThe younger generation consists of the philandering Young Ascoyne D’Ascoyne, whose arrogance causes Louis to get fired from his original draper’s assistant position and whose drowning sets Louis’ killing spree in motion. Then, the one good egg in the basket, Young Henry D’Ascoyne, is married to the beautiful Edith. His passion for amateur photography allows Louis to switch some of the chemicals in his darkroom, leading to Young Ascoyne’s death by explosion.
