Kind Hearts and Coronets

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Template:Infobox Film Kind Hearts and Coronets is a 1949 British Ealing comedy film.

The script was written by John Dighton and Robert Hamer and was very loosely based on a book, Israel Rank, by Roy Horniman. The title is a quotation from Tennyson's 1842 poem Lady Clara Vere de Vere, which proclaims that "Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood."

It starred Alec Guinness playing eight different members of the D'Ascoyne family. There are also notable performances from Dennis Price as the leading character, Joan Greenwood as a femme fatale, and Valerie Hobson; a young Arthur Lowe has a cameo at the end.

In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Kind Hearts and Coronets the 25th greatest comedy film of all time. In 2004 the same magazine named it the 7th greatest British film of all time.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Dennis Price plays Louis Mazzini, whose mother was ostracised by her noble family for eloping with an Italian opera singer. On her death, Louis seeks revenge on the D'Ascoynes, aiming to succeed to the Dukedom of Chalfont. The obstacles in his path — eight relatives ahead of him in line for the title — are all played by Alec Guinness.

Louis sets out to murder them all in various inventive (and often blackly humorous) ways. Two die before Mazzini has an opportunity to do anything, Mazzini's kind employer, who dies of a stroke when his son falls victim to Louis, and Admiral D'Ascoyne. In a scene which was a satire of the sinking of HMS Victoria in 1893, the stubborn admiral causes his ship to collide with another one and stands saluting on the bridge while it sinks beneath him. [1]

Complications ensue when Louis is torn between two women, Sibella, his longtime sensual paramour, and the more refined Edith D'Ascoyne, widow of another of his victims. The former becomes jealous of the latter. When Sibella's dull husband kills himself, she hides the suicide note and, ironically, Louis is tried and convicted of murdering one of the few people he didn't dispatch.

In prison awaiting execution, he writes his memoirs, detailing his exploits in full. Sibella has a change of heart and "finds" the suicide note, which saves Louis. Exiting the prison gates, he finds two carriages waiting for him, one with the forgiving Edith and the other with the seductively dangerous Sibella. While trying to choose between the two, he suddenly remembers he left his self-incriminating book back in his cell.

The film is especially memorable for its witty one-liners, two of which are quoted below.

Sibella: [sobs] Oh Louis! I don't want to marry Lionel!
Louis Mazzini: Why not?
Sibella: He's so dull.
Louis Mazzini: I must admit he exhibits the most extraordinary capacity for middle age that I've ever encountered in a young man of twenty-four.

Sibella: He [Lionel] says he wants to go to Europe to expand his mind.
Louis Mazzini: He certainly has room to do so.

There are also a number of delicious voice-overs from Mazzini. He despatches the first D'Ascoyne over a weir in the company of a girl with whom he, D'Ascoyne, had been enjoying an illicit weekend in Maidenhead.

Louis Mazzini: I was sorry about the girl, but found some relief in the reflection that she had presumably, during the weekend, already undergone a fate worse than death...

And when he shoots down Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne's hot air balloon, while she is distributing suffragette leaflets over London: