Barnes & Noble

Charm, elegance, and serial murder are mixed together like a perfect martini in this exquisitely dry and quintessentially British black comedy. Directed by Robert Hamer, it's the first of the great run of comedies featuring Alec Guinness that emerged from England’s Ealing Studios. Dennis Price stars as an English duke and convicted murderer who, on the eve of his execution, relates in flashback how he methodically killed off all the rival heirs to his titles -- murders that become increasingly inventive and amusing as his chronicle unfolds. The peerless Guinness plays all of the victims -- male and female -- in a chameleonlike tour de force. That the conceit never feels gimmicky is an enduring testament to Guinness's brilliance. Price is wonderful, too; his would-be duke is one of the most appealing cold-blooded killers ever put on film. Consummately refined, yet spiced up with delicious twists and intrigues, Kind Hearts and Coronets stops short of hilarity, opting instead for a subtle comic tone that brings the morbidity of the narrative into startling relief. Perhaps the most familiar of Guinness's Ealing productions, it is also one of cinema's all-time great comedies. Gregory Baird

All Movie Guide

Alec Guinness gets to die eight times, playing a line of successors to a dukedom, in the Ealing black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets. Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) is ninth in line to inherit the dukedom from the aristocratic D'Ascoyne family. Louis vows to kill all eight people who stand between him and the duke's title. Aside from two cases of natural causes, Louis works through the list, eliminating rivals (all played by Guinness). Along the way he romances Sibella (Joan Greenwood), a childhood friend who ends up marrying a dullard, and Edith (Valerie Hobson), the beautiful widow of one of his victims with whom he plans to share his title. But just when Louis is ready to assume the D'Ascoyne mantle, a bizarre irony strikes. Paul Brenner

New York Times

Class is the great unmentionable of American movies, but the British positively swill in the subject. Seldom has it been treated with more elegance and bile than in Robert Hamer's 1949 Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets. Dave Kehr

Product Details

• UPC: 715515016926
• Source: CRITERION
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Pre-1954 Standard (1.33.1)
• Presentation: B&W
• Sound: Dolby Digital Mono
• Language: English
• Time: 1:46:00
• Sales Rank: 5,206

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

• Alec Guinness Collection

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