Themes: Cons and Scams, Assumed Identities, Dishonor Among Thieves
Main Cast: Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers, Katie Johnson, Danny Green
Release Year: 1955
Country: UK
Run Time: 87 minutes
Plot
Music professor Alec Guinness rents a London flat from sweet old lady Katie Johnson. He tells her that, from time to time, several other musicians will visit in order to rehearse. In truth, Guinness can't play a note, nor can his visitors: he's a criminal mastermind, holding court over a gang of thieves, including the likes of punkish Peter Sellers, homicidal Herbert Lom and punchdrunk Danny Green. The gang uses Guinness' flat as headquarters as they conceive a daring 60,000 pound robbery. After pulling off the job, the gang stuffs the loot in a railway station locker. To avoid detection, Guinness convinces the ever-trusting Johnson to pick up the money. Through a series of comic complications, Johnson returns home with a police escort, with neither the woman nor the bobbies suspecting that she's carrying a fortune in her suitcase. Mistakenly believing that Johnson has ratted on them, the gang reluctantly plans to eliminate her. The Ladykillers won an Oscar nomination for William Rose's screenplay, and a BFA award for veteran character actress Johnson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Forever Ealing, a lovely documentary about Great Britain's famed studio, saves for last in its chronology the best of all Ealing comedies, this bonbon with a very dark, hard center. It is almost impossible to find fault with any aspect of this film, from its opening shot of Mrs. Wilberforce's house at the dead end of a city street overlooking a train yard to the same closing shot. William Rose's script economically sketches the slightly lopsided world of a little old lady seemingly oblivious to anything complex or sophisticated, as Mrs. Wilberforce makes her way through her neighborhood to the police station, where her visits to report strange activities are quite well-known. Rose takes us quickly through the heist, and at the film's halfway point, the story turns on the discovery by Mrs. W. of the money inside the cello case. For all their bravado, however, the gang of robbers who would menace her are nearly as harmless as their intended victim. None of them relish the idea that Mrs. W. cannot live to report them to the police. They would do anything -- even turn on each other -- rather than bump off the only person who can finger them. Alexander Mackendrick's direction is remarkably restrained; the slapstick moments are believably set up and executed with finesse. Nothing feels frantic here, right down to the amazing choreography of bodies falling off the railroad bridge in the last act. Alec Guinness, playing a man who understands all too well how the "human element" is the only variable in any master plan, and Katie Johnson, as a woman who is both sweet and determined, both carry the film; the looks that pass between Prof. Marcus and Mrs. Wilberforce when she realizes the truth about him and his friends are eloquent beyond description. Peter Sellers fans may be disappointed that he's not given more to do here, though it is amusing to watch him and Herbert Lom, future adversarial colleagues in the Pink Panther comedies, working together. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Jack Warner - Police Superintendent; Frankie Howerd - Barrow Boy; Philip Stainton - Sergeant; Fred Griffiths - Junk Man; Kenneth Connor - The Cab Driver; Madge Brindley; Helen Burls - Hypatia; Harold Goodwin - Parcels Clerk; Lucy Griffiths; Stratford Johns - Security Guard; Sam Kydd; Edie Martin - Lettice; Jack Melford - Detective; Ewan Roberts - Constable; Neil Wilson; George Roderick; Leonard Sharp - Pavement Artist; Michael Corcoran; John Rudling; Robert Moore
Credit
Jim Morahan - Art Director, Seth Holt - Associate Producer, Anthony Mendleson - Costume Designer, Tom Pevsner - First Assistant Director, Alexander MacKendrick - Director, Jack Harris - Editor, Tristram Cary - Composer (Music Score), Dock Mathieson - Musical Direction/Supervision, Alex Garfath - Makeup, Chic Waterson - Camera Operator, Otto Heller - Cinematographer, Michael Balcon - Producer, Syd Pearson - Special Effects, William Rose - Screenwriter
A comically sinister criminal, "Professor" Marcus (Guinness), rents rooms in the gradually subsiding "lopsided" King's Cross house of an innocent and eccentric old lady, Mrs Louisa Wilberforce (Johnson), a widow who lives alone with her parrots. The Professor has put together a gang for a sophisticated security van robbery at Kings Cross Station in London: the gentlemanly con-man "Major" Courtney (Parker), the Cockney spiv Harry Robinson (Sellers), the slow-witted ex-boxer "One-Round" Lawson (Green), and the vicious continental gangster Louis Harvey (Lom). However, the Professor convinces Mrs Wilberforce that they are an amateur string quintet using the room for rehearsal space. To maintain the deception, the gang members carry musical instruments and play a recording of Boccherini's Minuet (3rd movement) from String Quintet in E, Op. 13 No. 5 during their planning sessions.
Mrs Wilberforce confronts Professor Marcus and his "ensemble"
After the successful heist, which involves putting the cash in a cabin trunk and placing it in the station parcel office, with Mrs Wilberforce playing an unwitting but crucial role by escorting the loot through the police cordon, the real conflict of the film begins. As the gang leaves her house, One-Round accidentally gets his cello case full of banknotes trapped in the front door as it is closed by Mrs Wilberforce. As he pulls the case free the banknotes spill out in front of Mrs Wilberforce. She realises the truth and informs Marcus that she is going to report them to the police.
The gang, it seems, has no choice but to do away with her. No one wants to do the job, so they draw matchsticks. The Major loses, but tries to make a run for it with the cash in hand. In quick succession, the criminals double-cross and kill one another, with the bodies ending up dumped into railway wagons passing behind the house. Throughout all this, the oblivious Mrs Wilberforce remains asleep.
In the end, the gang members are all dead, and Mrs Wilberforce is left with the money. The deaths occur in the following order:
Major Courtney is killed by Louis Harvey on Mrs Wilberforce's rooftop.
Mr. Robinson is killed by One-Round when One-Round thinks that Mr. Robinson has killed Mrs Wilberforce.
One-Round is killed by Louis when he tries to shoot Professor Marcus and Louis but "stupidly" leaves the safety catch on making him vulnerable in a cloud of smoke from a passing train.
Louis is thwarted by Professor Marcus, who loosens the trackside ladder on which Louis is standing, causing him to fall into a railway wagon.
Shortly after killing Louis, Professor Marcus, standing on a railway signal gantry, is hit by a signal arm when it falls, and he drops directly into another railway wagon.
Left alone with the money, Mrs Wilberforce goes to the police. They are familiar with her strange stories and pretend to believe her account, but jokingly tell her to keep the money. Ironically, Professor Marcus had earlier assured her that, because the money was insured, any effort on her part to return it would only confuse things. She is therefore finally persuaded that keep it she must. On the way home she rewards an astonished pavement artist with a £5 note.
The British comedian Frankie Howerd has a cameo role as an agitated market fruit seller caused when a horse begins to eat his apples, along with Kenneth Connor as a taxi driver. A young Stratford Johns (Charlie Barlow from Z-Cars) plays the driver of the lorry that gets robbed.
In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted The Ladykillers the 36th greatest comedy film of all time.
Film locations
Mrs Wilberforce's house, No 57, was a set built at the western end of Frederica Street, directly above the southern portal of Copenhagen Tunnel on the railway line leading out of King's Cross station. However, the views from her house show Argyle Street, a couple of miles away, with the tower of St Pancras Station in the background.
