☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) -- R. Hamer
Key Ealing Comedy starring Dennis Price as a young man whose mother was disinherited from her noble family (because she married an Italian man below her station) and who seeks revenge. At the start of the film, there are 12 people ahead of him in the line of succession to the Dukedom and by the time he hatches his plan, only 8, all played by Alec Guiness (including in drag). You can guess what is plan is, as the film begins with Price in the death house waiting to be hanged the next morning. This makes for a delicious, very understated, probably subversive black comedy. There are some hints that the main character is gay (as was apparently the director) and the film is set during the time of Oscar Wilde, but I never noticed such things until they were pointed out. Why don't they make them like this anymore?
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