Four Pints of Guinness: Kind Hearts and Coronets (Dir Robert Hamer, 1h 45m, 1949)

Betweeen 1947 and 1957, from the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Ealing Studios made twenty-one comedies. Though barely a tenth of their output in their 120-year history, these comedies have become a cinematic synonym for the studio. They constitute a satirical suite of pictures that typify a changing Post-War Britain, longing to escape the lingering rationing, regulations and regimentation of wartime, and eager to explore and exploit those structures that persisted from the English class system and the priviledged establishment , (Kind Hearts and Coronets) to the criminal underworld, (The Lavender Hill Mob) or the teenagers ducking and diving in the post war landscape (Hue and Cry) to the criminal gang of The Ladykillers and a rural community (The Titfield Thunderbolt) standing up against the powers that be to protect their slice of England.

Of this twenty-one, six are, quite rightly regarded as some of the greatest British films ever made. Four of them, as you may have already have guessed from this rather enjoyably knowing titled series, feature perhaps the greatest British actor of the late 1940s to late 1950s, Alec Guinness (the outliers being the charming, WWII-set Whiskey Galore, in which a Scottish community bands together, after a ship runs aground, against the intrusions of the mainland, and Passport to Pimlico, set-post war, in which the London borough declares itself independent to avoid rationing, and band together against the outside world).

Each of the films  AlecGuinness made with Ealing are, undeniably, some of the best British comedies, period. The actor is equally at home playing eccentric chemists as he is a scheming bullion thief and the sinister ringleader of a heist that eventually goes horribly wrong. It is, though, to the film made alongside this duo of Whiskey and Pimlico that we turn to first; for Kind Hearts and Coronets begins "Four Pints of Guinness" season with not one Alec, but nine, with the actor playing every member of the aristocratic and landed D'Ascoyne family, who are murdered one by one by their slighted would-be successor. In a film that acts, not only as a masterful showcase for the barely thirty-four year old Guinness acting abilities, but a perfect cross-section of post-war masculinity, class, gender and sexual attitudes. and the repressed vengeful feelings that bubble just under the calming surface in so many of the Ealing comedies.

Kind Hearts is not merely a comedy about class, but a biting social satire on both the embedded upper class in the Edwardian era, and their utter ruthlessness. Like many of Ealings' heroes, Louis D'Ascoyne Mazzini (Dennis Price, already an established matinee idol, and later to play the beloved Jeeves in the now-almost-lost series The World of Wooster), is a complex figure, easy at once to sympathise with-we meet him, already at the successful completion of his plans, but awaiting his execution in prison, with his memoirs providing the events in flashback-and whilst he cuts a charming and distinctive figure in his silk-dressing gown the Edwardian aristocrat personified.

Like many of the heroes of the Ealing comedies, Mazzini is more than just the upper class gentleman, as we're about to discover. From here, the film jumps back in time via Louis's writings, to his birth and early childhood, including the first of many gleefully comic deaths, as Louis's father (an uncredited Price), suffers a fatal heart-attack, leaving his wife, the youngest, and quickly disinherited daughter of the D'Ascoyne household, and her infant son, largely destitute.

By this point, Louis has been made fully aware of his potential birthright, and the odd characteristics of the eccentric the D'Ascoyne family in that the Dukedom of Chalfont, which the D'Ascoyne family call their home, can be inherited along both maternal and paternal family lines, leaving Louis as a remote, but possible, successor to the Dukedom. However, following rebuttal by the D'Ascoyne family, and the death of his mother-and a second rebuttal of her burial at the ancestral seat-so he plans, in revenge, to do away with the rest of the family. He is only further embittered by the loss of his childhood sweetheart, Sibella (a sultry and husky-voiced Joan Greenwood), to marriage, and his dismissal once he comes across-and quarrels with-one of the D'Ascoyne sons. Thus, slowly, and surely, he pulls together his plans.

It is, of course, at this point, Alec Guinness enters the picture; quite literally, as he plays the feckless youngest son of the family, Ascoyne, the man responsible for his firing, and the son of the man whose rebuttal left Louis out of a career with the family. To describe Guiness as the backbone of this film is an understatement; he pratically disappears into each of the eight living members (and the previous Duke, via a brief flashback), playing caddish-or, on occasion, charming-young men, a doddering priest, a general and an admiral, and even an elderly female suffragette. Each is wonderfully defined,visually-and vocally-distinct, Guinness finding the challenge of playing eight rather than four members of the same family a challenge to his already considerable talents-and superbly met.

It is also here that the film's blackly morbid sense of humour comes into play, as, no sooner have Ascoyne D'Ascoyne and Louis crossed paths than the young man is already planning the demise of his distant relative, who he eventually offs in a scene that manages to cross back and forth between tension and comedy, as he unties the punt Ascoyne and his illicit mistress are canoodling in, and it merrily sails away to tumble over the edge of a nearby weir, leaving Louis to return home to cross off the first of the D'Ascoyne family off the family tree, and begin his plans to deal with the rest, whilst slowly making his way into the good graces of Asycoyne's father (Lord Ascoyne), and his banking empire.

It is here that we get the most impressive moment of the film. Through camera trickery, in multiple exposure shots that took several days to complete, complimented by Alec Guinness's ability to morph between the members of the D'Ascoyne family through still-impressive makeup and his equally impressive acting skill, we have the entire family appearing at their unfortunate relatives funeral in one shot. It's still impressive today, but for 1949 it's positively jaw-dropping, and, in simple terms, places the seven obstacles to claiming the ancestral seat that he has now set his sights upon. This sets up the rest of the film-we, like Louis, now know what awaits us, Guinness and the film have played their trump card, and the stage is set for blackly comic serial killings.

Publicly, though, the film now dives into the class struggle in an altogether less nefarious way-with a space now (quite macabrely) open for him, Louis becomes part of the bank and quickly rises through the ranks, allowing him to once again live independently, allowing him to carry on his engagement with the now unhappily married Sibella away from prying eyes. Soon, though, his plans are once again afoot, with another one of the younger D'Ascoynes, the charming but somewhat shallow photographer. Henry, now in his sights. Here, we're also introduced to Henry's young wife (Edith, played by Valerie Hobson), and the film cannot help but begin to reveal its other satire, that of gender.

Kind Hearts is a film dominated by men, so it is fascinating, even cast back four decades in the narrative to the Edwardian era, to see how it depicts women; of one, Guinness's suffragette is little more than a thumbnail sketch, a elderly troublemaker who smashes windows and is often imprisoned-she serves the story, without a doubt, but by necessity, as her demise comes in a montage involving her other, lesser relatives, is kept to a few choice elements by design. The other two female characters, Edith and Sibella, are masterfully done, at once a key representation of the lonely and bored upper classes, and immensely powerful figures, with almost absolute control over the weak-willed men around them, which comes to the fore magnificently in the trial that condemns Louis to prison and execution.

From here, the film's body-count gathers pace. Henry is blown up by Louis swapping the photographic chemicals in Henry's developing shed, in a masterful-and extremely funny-shot that holds on Louis and Edith as the billowing smoke rises over a wall behind them. Next, Lord Henry, the clergyman of the family, a doddering satire of the church at the turn of the 20th century, as a wing of the British Empire, is murdered with poison in the port he overindulges in. Agatha, the suffragette, is shot down from the balloon she drops leaflets onto London from, and the two military men of the family, the soldier, Rufus and the Admiral, Horatio, are respectively blown up by booby-trapped caviar whilst spouting their war stories, and choose to go down with their ship after an unfortunate accident.

This bleakly funny montage quickly narrows the odds of Louis inheriting his ancestral seat, leaving only Ethelred, the current Duke and the elder Ascoyne, Louis's kindly employer, with a further step into aristocracy via his intention to marry the widowed and still grieving Edith, which in turn, grants him a weekend at Chalfont Castle with Ethelred. By this point, though, his relationship with both Sibella and her husband, the feckless and increasingly alcoholic Lionel, is beginning to deteriorate, with Lionel drunkenly setting upon his former friend, desperate to save his own finances.

His rebuttal not only begins the chain of events that will see him tried for, not his relatives, but Lionel's murder, but sees him cut away the final link between the two classes he inhabits as he and his ambition carry him ever closer to his prize, culminating in him revealling his plan to Ethelred, and shooting him dead in a mock-hunting accident. With Ascoyne dying of a heart attack, so Louis's path to the Dukedom seems set, only for the death of Lionel, and his trial and subsequent imprisonment, to derail everything.

It is here, as he awaits his execution, that the ultimate sense of the film's sexual repression, and its relationship to women, becomes clear, with Sibella's appearance to console Louis and hint at the suicide note that she has withheld, darkly hinting that Louis is to commit one final murder so that both of them can be free. The note promptly surfaces, Louis is set free, much to the disappointment of the retiring hangman, but, in the classic tradition of Ealing's blackly comic endings, the Duke suddenly realises that his memoirs-and his full confession-have been left behind in his prison cell...

Kind Hearts and Coronets is, arguably, one of the finest British films of the era, at once depicting the state of Edwardian society, and, in black comedy, revealling the rot underneath it, from staid generals to the machinations of class warfare, to the grimly funny deterioration of Church, Military and State that Louis's serial offing of his relatives lays bare. It is also, undeniably, a glimpse into what the filmography of Robert Hamer could have been, without alcohol and the repression of the age.
Louis, for his part, is at once a great social climber, and a repressed simmering pot of violence, driven to ever more elaborate murder-schemes as he grows closer and closer to his goal.

Against him, though, Kind Hearts places its secret weapon-Guinness defines this film, his octo-roles at once cutting caricatures of the Edwardian upper class, and perfectly rendered sketches of living breathing people-that all eight of them are easily identifiable, despite two sharing names and vague appearances with their older relatives, that Guinness plays young men and elderly spinsters, and that all of this, including dangerous stunts that nearly drowned the actor, is from an already accomplished actor at a mere 34, gives the film its momentum, its upper class institution for its (anti-)hero to rail against.

Guinness defines Kind Hearts and Coronets, and, next week, he will step out of the shadows to play perhaps Ealing's greatest anti-hero. For now, though, he stands against Louis as perhaps the greatest antagonists of Ealing's filmography, in one of their funniest, most socially satirical, and undeniably, greatest, films.

Rating: Must See (Personal Recommendation)

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