The Ladykillers (1955)

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The Ladykillers (1955) – A. Mackendrick

Positioned near the end of Ealing Studios’ amazing run of comedies, many featuring Sir Alec Guinness, The Ladykillers is also a caper film where whatever can go wrong does.  This is no knock on the very clever armoured car heist planned by Professor Marcus (Guinness wearing some very scary false teeth) and his gang (including Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, a young Peter Sellers, and Danny Green).  They just weren’t prepared for Mrs Wilberforce (Katie Johnson), an old lady whose particular way of doing things makes trouble for just about everyone and throws a spanner in the gang’s plans.  Although perhaps it made sense for them to rent her spare room in the house by the railway tracks (pretending to be a string quartet needing practice space, ha, ha), they didn’t realise they’d have to contend with her parrots, nosy elderly friends, fondness for reporting things to the police, etc. etc.  The pivotal moment in the plot here is not dissimilar from the final catastrophe in Kubrick’s genre-related The Killing (1956), which came out the next year. After that, the gang just can’t hold it together in the face of Mrs Wilberforce’s scrutiny and will.  Director Alexander Mackendrick went on to make Sweet Smell of Success (1957), an extremely bitter and cynical look at the media in New York, while Guinness graduated to David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), both leaving comedy behind (perhaps not completely).  But what a way to go!