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A 1951 comedy classic from Britain's famed Ealing Studios, The Lavender Hill Mob benefits from droll scripting (by T.E.B. Clarke, who won an Oscar for his screenplay), airy direction (by A Fish Called Wanda's Charles Crichton) and, most of all, the delightfully eccentric performance of Alec Guinness. A classically trained actor with extensive stage experience, Guinness seemed very much at home in the madcap Ealing comedies. Here he plays timid bank clerk Henry Holland, who hatches a scheme for stealing the gold bullion he regularly escorts from refineries to vaults. With the help of a somewhat gormless friend (Stanley Holloway) and two Cockney crooks (Sidney James and Alfie Bass), Henry grabs a cool million in bullion -- which gets melted down, cast into small souvenir replicas of the Eiffel Tower, and shipped to France! Clarke's script abounds with complications and climaxes with a hilarious, masterfully choreographed chase sequence. Crichton is at the top of his game, whisking Guinness and company from one improbable situation to the next and wringing every drop of humor from each. The roles are perfectly cast, and the acting is uniformly excellent (by the way, look closely and you'll spot a young Audrey Hepburn in the opening sequence). This kind of character-driven comedy, sadly, has all but vanished from today's movies, but Lavender Hill Mob is a glorious reminder of an earlier, much funnier era. It also represents a tour de force for Guinness, an accomplished comic actor whose early screen triumphs have been ignored in the wake of his success as Star Wars' Obi-Wan Kenobi. The DVD includes a Guinness biography and the film's theatrical trailer as supplemental features. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

Charles Crichton directed The Lavender Hill Mob, an Ealing caper comedy with a witty, Academy Award-winning script by T.E.B. Clarke. Alec Guinness is Henry Holland, an unassuming transporter of gold bullion who, after working for twenty years with no rewards in sight for his faithful service to his company, decides to reward himself by stealing one million pounds worth of gold. Calling on his old friend Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway), a manufacturer of paperweights and an amateur sculptor, and a couple of Cockney crooks, Lackery (Sidney James) and Shorty (Alfie Bass), they conspire to lift a gold shipment. After absconding with the gold, Henry melts the gold into a collection of souvenir Eiffel Towers, which he then ships off to Paris. But chaos reigns when a group of English schoolgirls purchase the gold towers, and the gang now become embroiled in a wild goose chase to recover their stolen gold. Paul Brenner

Product Details

• UPC: 013131147599
• Source: STARZ / ANCHOR BAY
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Pre-1954 Standard (1.33.1)
• Presentation: B&W
• Sound: Dolby Digital Mono
• Language: English, Français
• Time: 1:21:00

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Alec Guinness Collection

Features:

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