Cult Classics from the Rialto Collection
Sunday, November 6 | 2 pm
Produced by Ealing Studios, this blackest of black comedies chronicles the exploits of Louis D’Ascoyne Mazzini, the 10th Duke of Chalfont. Born into the aristocratic D’Ascoyne family, Louis’s mother was disowned after marrying a dashing Italian musician and forced to live and die in not-so-gentile poverty. Vowing to avenge his mother’s disinheritance and reclaim his noble birthright, Louis sets about dispatching the D’Ascoynes one-by-one. Structuring the film around the Duke’s self-aggrandizing death-row memoirs, director Robert Hamer (Dead of Night) wrings delicious irony from the juxtaposition of genteel, novelistic form and gleefully morbid content. Hailed as a pinnacle of British filmmaking, Kind Hearts and Coronets is anchored by a set of inspired comedic performances: consummate chameleon Alec Guinness is in top form playing all eight members of the doomed D’Ascoyne family, while Joan Greenwood strikes just the right note of plummy-voiced amorality as Louis’s ambitious childhood paramour, Sibella.
For more about Kind Hearts and Coronets from Director of Curatorial Affairs, Dr. Michael J. Anderson, click here.
Director Robert Hamer 1949 UK 106 minutes NR (language) DCP
