The Ladykillers

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Image:The Ladykillers.jpgThe Ladykillers is a 1955 British film. It is one of a series of classic post-war Ealing Studios comedies and is considered by many to be one of Ealing's real 'gems'.

Directed by Alexander Mackendrick, 'The Ladykillers' stars Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers, Danny Green, Jack Warner and Katie Johnson. Frankie Howerd also has a cameo role as an agitated market fruit seller. American William Rose wrote the screenplay, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay and won the Bafta Award for Best British Screenplay. He claims to have dreamed the entire movie and merely had to remember the details when he awoke.

The movie was remade by the Coen Brothers in 2004 starring Tom Hanks. It co-starred J. K. Simmons, Marlon Wayans, Tzi Ma (Rush Hour), Ryan Hurst (Remember The Titans), and Irma P. Hall. It is the first Coen film in which Ethan and Joel Coen share both producing and directing credit; previously Ethan had always been credited as producer, and Joel as director. The movie soundtrack by T-Bone Burnett features traditional gospel music composed by Thomas A. Dorsey and Blind Willie Johnson, inter alia, sets the tone of the film much as American roots music did for the previous Coen work O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

In sharp contrast to the original, the remake was largely a critical flop.

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1955 version

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A comically unpleasant criminal, Professor Marcus (Guinness), rents a room in the rundown King's Cross house of a bewilderingly innocent old lady, Mrs "Lop Sided" Wilberforce (Johnson) - who lives alone with her parrots. The Professor and his gang of curious characters plot a sophisticated armed car robbery, while convincing Mrs Wilberforce, by playing records, that they are in fact musicians using the room for rehearsal space. After the successful theft, things start to go wrong: Mrs Wilberforce finds out what Professor Marcus et al. have done and whilst some of the villains try to kill her to prevent her from talking, others do their best to protect her. Slowly but surely, the gang falls apart in a series of double-crosses executed under the cover of trains passing on the nearby East Coast Main Line, through which a targeted but marvellously oblivious Mrs Wilberforce wanders untouched... By the end, the gang members have killed each other, and Mrs Wilberforce ends up with the money when the police don't believe her story about the robbery.

Although there are many first rate performances in this film, it is perhaps Alec Guinness who steals the show. The Guinness role was originally written for Alastair Sim. (In fact Guinness's performance appears to many to be a very good Alastair Sim impersonation).

A radio adaptation of the film was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on January 13, 1996.

In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted 'The Ladykillers' the 36th greatest comedy film of all time.

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2004 version

Image:The Ladykillers movie.jpg In the remake the setting is moved to Saucier, Mississippi, home of a riverboat casino. Hanks rents a room in the house of a widow (Hall). He persuades her to allow him and his gang, posing as a Renaissance musical ensemble, to rehearse in her dirt-walled cellar. From there they secretly tunnel into the counting room of the nearby casino.

The film was a financial failure, receiving mostly mixed reviews in the United States and the United Kingdom [1], [2] but some positive reviews elsewhere such as in France [3].

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