Kind Hearts and Coronets is a 1949 English black comedy directed by Robert Hamer. It was written by John Dighton and Hamer, and loosely based upon the novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal (1907), by Roy Horniman. The Kind Hearts and Coronets title derives from Tennyson's poem Lady Clara Vere de Vere (1842): "Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood."
Dennis Price is an heir to a dukedom, but eight members of the D'Ascoyne family precede him; Alec Guinness portrays all eight, including a woman. There are also notable performances from Valerie Hobson and Joan Greenwood as the femme fatale.
Kind Hearts and Coronets is regarded as one of the best Ealing Studios films, and is listed in Time magazine's top 100, and in the BFI Top 100 British films. In 2000, Total Film magazine readers voted Kind Hearts and Coronets as the twenty-fifth-greatest comedy film, and, in 2004, named it the seventh-greatest British film.
Plot
In Edwardian England, Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) is the son of a woman ostracised by her aristocratic family for eloping with an Italian opera singer. Upon her death, the D'Ascoynes deny her burial in the family crypt. As a result, Louis plots revenge: succeeding to the Dukedom of Chalfont — but eight relatives stand in his way.
Louis determines to murder them, killing six with inventive, blackly humorous, ways: for example when one particularly nasty and arrogant relative-who had got him dismissed from his job-is distracted with a mistress, Louis sends them both over a dam in a rowboat; another who is a suffragette in a balloon he shoots down with a bow and arrow; a bombastic retired General is blown up in his club by a bomb; Louis also deposes of two relatives-one a photographer and the other a boring parson-in "accidents". He tells the trapped eighth Duke what he has done and why, before killing him and making it look like a "shooting accident". Two others die without his assistance: Admiral D'Ascoyne obstinately orders his warship to steer a collision course with another ship, and, saluting at the bridge, goes down with his ship, satirising the sinking of HMS Victoria in 1893.[1] The aged Lord Ascoyne D'Ascoyne, a banker who generously employed Louis, literally dies from the shock of inheriting the dukedom, and Louis become the tenth Duke of Chalfont.
Complications ensue when Louis is torn between two women: Sibella (Joan Greenwood), his earthy paramour, and the refined, aristocratic Edith D'Ascoyne (Valerie Hobson), the widow of his second victim. He marries Edith. When Sibella's dull husband, Lionel (John Penrose), kills himself, she hides his suicide note. Ironically, Louis is convicted of murdering someone he did not kill.
Awaiting execution, he writes his memoirs, confessing to everything. At the last moment, Sibella "finds" the suicide note, saving Louis. As he steps through the prison gate, two carriages awaiting him: Edith's and Sibella's. Hesitating, he quotes from The Beggar's Opera, "How happy could I be with either, Were t'other dear charmer away!" When a publisher approaches him, asking for the publication rights to his memoirs, Louis suddenly remembers the manuscript he left in his cell.
The American version
To satisfy the Hays Office Production Code, Kind Hearts and Coronets was censored for the American market.[2] Some ten seconds of footage was added to the ending, showing the manuscript of Louis' memoirs being discovered before he can retrieve them. This ending is an extra product in the Region 1 Kind Hearts and Coronets Criterion Collection DVD: the European adult dialogue, between Louis and Sibella, was altered to downplay their adultery; derogatory lines about the Parson were deleted; and in the song "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe", sailor replaced the racist word nigger. The American version of Kind Hearts and Coronets is six minutes shorter than the British original.
Differences between novel and film
In Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal, the protagonist is a Jew, not an Italian. Novelist Roy Horniman had been accused of anti-Semitism, so, for Kind Hearts and Coronets the filmmakers changed the character's ethnic background. In the novel, the protagonist is a vulgar, unpleasant man, named "Israel", not "Louis", whose mother is not the daughter of an aristocrat, but a distant relative.
Cast
- Dennis Price as Louis Mazzini and Mazzini's father
- Alec Guinness as The Duke, The Banker, The Parson, The General, The Admiral, Young Ascoyne, Young Henry, Lady Agatha, and in a family ancestor's portrait. Originally, he was offered only four D'Ascoyne parts: "I read [the screenplay] on a beach in France, collapsed with laughter on the first page, and didn't even bother to get to the end of the script. I went straight back to the hotel and sent a telegram saying, ‘Why four parts? Why not eight!?' " [3]
- Valerie Hobson as Edith
- Joan Greenwood as Sibella
- Audrey Fildes as Mama
- Miles Malleson as The Hangman
- Clive Morton as The Prison Governor
- John Penrose as Lionel
- Cecil Ramage as Crown Counsel
Hugh Griffith appears briefly as the Lord High Steward in Louis's trial in the House of Lords. Arthur Lowe briefly appears at film's end as the Tit-Bits magazine representative offering to buy Louis's memoirs.
Production
Chalfont, the family home of the d'Ascoynes, is Leeds Castle in Kent, England.[4] The film's musical theme is Il mio tesoro ("My treasure"), from Don Giovanni, by Mozart. The collected correspondence between the novelists Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford record that Ealing studios employed them separately to write the screenplay; none of their contributions are in the final script.
Literary references
- Louis's line on killing Lady Agatha — "I shot an arrow in the air, she fell to earth in Berkeley Square", parodies HW Longfellow's The Arrow and the Song: "I shot an arrow in the air, it fell to earth I know not where".
- In the early story, Louis paraphrases Samuel Johnson's quotation: "When a man knows he is to be hanged the next morning, it concentrates the mind wonderfully", as "When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates the mind wonderfully".
- Louis's quip that he sent "caviar to the general" is from Hamlet (Act 2, Scene 2).
- At story's end, facing the two-women dilemma, he quotes The Beggar's Opera: "How happy could I be with either, Were t'other dear charmer away!"
Radio version
The BBC7 broadcast a radio version of Kind Hearts and Coronets, featuring Michael Kitchen and Harry Enfield.
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography
- The Great British Films, pp 131–133, Jerry Vermilye, 1978, Citadel Press, ISBN 080650661X
External links
