I may have already mentioned a similar notion in the past, but one of my subconscious aims for this project is to watch and review a more obscure set of films than what more traditional movie critics would typically talk about. Lately though I've gotten the impression, especially with some of my more recent selections, that I'm only going to succeed in this occasionally. Most of the films reviewed here I suspect will be more popular, mainstream efforts and there's nothing wrong with this. Many of these films I have enjoyed enough not to have any regrets. Plus I'm aware that if a film is too obscure, then it's probably never going to be selected. A certain number of people have to know about a film for me to review it through this process. I’m not certain how to best measure a film’s level of obscurity, but one idea I've had is to consider the number of critic reviews that exist for it. The fact that film reviews are scattered all over the Internet and that even the most popular aggregate sites have not come close to corralling them all makes this rather difficult to tabulate. If I only consider the website IMDB.com, on average the films reviewed through this project have about 117 critic reviews posted to IMDB, which is still a fairly large number. Granted there is a great deal of variance to this statistic. Black Swan currently holds 667 critic reviews, while Ich Will Nicht Nur, Dass Ihr Mich Liebt still only has 1.
The thing is I experience a greater level of anticipation towards my more obscure selections. For me, cultural products that I know nothing about, more often than not, are accompanied with greater intrigue and interest then the products that popular culture has attempted to ram down our throats. Who knows how many films are out there that I've never heard of before and whom I will never spark one conscious thought towards its existence. Whatever this tally is, it's good to know that it decreases by one each time I select films like my next selection.
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The cover features the name of one actor who I have heard of before Alec Guinness, along with three lesser known performers: Dennis Price, Valerie Hobson, and Joan Greenwood. Under the cast list is the film's title, with an artist's rendering of a royal crown sitting at a crooked angle atop the 't' in "Coronets". Below the title is a bearded and mustached Alec Guinness dressed as a high ranking navy officer, giving a salute. The scene that accompanies him is poorly lit and not easy to make out, but he looks to be inside some sort of house (or possibly a ship) that is currently waist deep with water. It's also hard to tell if he has a glove on, or if his hand is simply caked cherry red in blood. Below the image of Guinness is a graphic that indicates where this film ranks on some subjective film list and to the left of this image is the film's tagline: "A Hilarious Study In The Gentle Art of MURDER". The word 'murder' is not only capitalized, but is colored red for greater emphasis.
The movie starts with an unknown man walking towards a heavily fortified prison gate. He knocks on the door and while waiting to be let in, notices a paper note attached to the outside wall signaling the impending punishment by death of Louis D’Ascoyne Mazzini, the current Duke of Chalfont. The man who arrives is an executioner who meets with the prison warden about the details of the event to take place the following morning. He peeks inside Louis’s cell to see him calmly writing at a desk. Louis puts the finishing touches on his memoirs just as the warden enters his cell and inquires if he can do anything else for the inmate. The warden is clearly awestruck by Louis’s inconceivable poise in what where the final hours of the prisoner’s life. Louis has no immediate desires and after the warden leaves, he begins to peruse his draft. The film then transitions into a flashback sequence to tell his life story.
Louis’s mother had been the daughter of the 7th Duke of Chalfont, who lived amongst all the rich splendors of a medieval castle. One night an Italian singer came to the castle to perform for the Duke and his family, and Louis’s mother fell in love. She eloped with the Italian singer which earned great scorn from her family. So much so, that she was banished from the castle and forced to live by more meager means in London, with all communication between her and her aristocratic family severed.
Five years into her marriage, Louis was born and his arrival into the world coincided with his father’s fatal heart attack. After being widowed, Louis’s mother made an attempt at reconciliation with her family, but did not receive a reply and remained socially detached from the D’Ascoynes. While growing up his mother taught Louis about his family history and that he descended from a duke, a title that could still be passed down to him through his mother. Even if the D’Ascoynes did recognize Louis’s existence (which they didn’t) becoming a duke would still have been a long shot for Louis due to the numerous other heirs who could compete for the title. In her contempt Louis’s mother brandishes an awful thought, wishing horrible and sudden deaths for all the other heirs. It plants a seed in Louis’s mind that begins to sprout after his mother’s death and the subsequent refusal of the D’Ascoynes to allow his mother to be buried at Chalfont.
Unable to financially support himself, Louis takes up a residence with old friends of his from school. This includes the dashing Sibella who Louis carries a torch for. One night Louis proposes marriage to Sibella who curtly refuses, informing him that she has already agreed to marry Lionel, a man of far greater means. In doing so she also scoffs at his wild tale of being in line to someday become a duke. This causes Louis to further curse his current station in life and feeds his budding impulse to aim for the dukeship.
Louis then plots to kill all 7 of the remaining heirs and the current Duke himself. With his motivation fully blossomed, Louis still has little capacity to pull off the deed. That is until one day when, at the shop where Louis works, he has the fortune of meeting Ascoyne D’Ascoyne. He stalks the heir and his female companion while on a weekend holiday and manages to drift their boat over a waterfall, staging their death as an accident. Louis then uses this tragedy to offer his condolences to Ascoyne’s father and manages to meet him and get a job in his bank. Next Louis targets Henry a more youthful heir, who has an insatiable passion for photography. After staging his death to look like an accident in his darkroom, Louis befriends Henry’s widow Edith, and in doing so gains the necessary access to murder the other 6 members of the family. Methodically he goes after each heir one by one, with some of the deaths requiring little guile on his part to pull off.
The only complication comes from the subplot of Louis’s continued relationship with Sibella. After Sibella announces the date of her marriage to Lionel, Louis informs Sibella of his newly acquired job working at D’Ascoyne’s bank. At this point, you can see the early stages of doubt arise in Sibella about her possibly marrying the wrong man. Her torment is intensified when Louis begins to fall in love with Edith. Sibella visits Louis at his apartment and makes her true desires known to him. On a later visit Sibella makes an off the cuff remark and by virtue of this comment learns of Louis’s grisly actions. Later Louis pays a visit to Lionel, who had gone bankrupt in his business and had increasingly turned towards liquor for comfort. Lionel asks Louis for a loan, but is refused. Louis proceeds to brawl with the man, before leaving him to stew in his own incompetence.
After the 8th Duke of Chalfont meets his untimely end and the last remaining heir among his targets also passes on, Louis ascends to the title himself as the 10th Duke. At his reception he is greeted by an officer from Scotland Yard. The detective in a bit of a surprise inquires not about the deaths in the D’Ascoyne family, but rather about Lionel’s death. Louis is tried in court and found guilty of killing Lionel. He is subsequently jailed and sentenced to death. Sibella greets Louis in his cell and rather slyly discusses the possibility of finding a suicide note in exchange for choosing a life with her instead of with Edith. This takes the story back to where it started at the beginning of the film. Right before his execution Louis receives a reprieve in the form of a suicide note miraculously produced by Sibella. His charges are dropped and Louis is a free man. He leaves the prison and sees both Edith and Sibella waiting for him. But before he can choose which of his admirers to accompany, a man walks up to him and asks about the publication of his memoirs, which Louis had inconveniently left on the desk within his cell. The film ends with Louis mortified at the realization that he too miraculously produced a note that will swiftly alter his fate.
What I found most striking about the film was the excellent writing that was on display in both the lines of dialogue and in the narration segments. It was extremely sharp, witty and enhanced by a remarkably stylish, artful approach. Even in the early stages you hear Louis say to one of his prison guards “My good man, it is not by my choice that you keep me company, if you wish to sleep, pay me the courtesy of sleeping quietly”. Later Edith invokes the main theme of the film with the comment about her husband’s family “…they think too much of the rights of nobility and too little of its duties”. Even Louis’s marriage proposal was done with a genteel grace and thoughtfulness: “If you should ever feel that the constant support of a devoted admirer would be of an assistance to you, I should be most honored if you would permit me to offer you my hand in marriage”. Edith in a later scene reciprocates this elegance in equal measure, “If your attention as a husband is the equal of your consideration as a friend, I should have made the most fortunate decision”.
The writing simply exudes with a limitless cache of class that carried a certain dignified air and yet was able to achieve this without coming off as snobbish, or intellectually obtuse. At times the dialogue could be humorous (although I still wouldn't call this film a laugh riot) and even poignant. For instance when Sibella mentioned that Lionel wanted to improve his mind, Louis offers the retort “He has room to do so”. In a later scene Louis warns Sibella that she is playing with fire for getting romantically involved with him, with Sibella replying “At least it warms me”. Another great line was the bittersweet lament that Edith expresses after her husband’s funeral “The house will be so empty…and yet he will be in it everywhere”. Another strength of the writing was its depth and subtext which really comes to a wonderful climax in the jail visit scene. The dialogue between Sibella and Louis here might have been the best in the entire film and in comes within a picture that would make a great master class in both narration and dialogue writing.
The film also had a cast that performed the strong material with great skill and grace. Dennis Price was good, albeit a bit monotone and methodical in the role of Louis. Strangely I felt as if he put more passion and energy into his voice-over narration segments then in his acted scenes. He seems to hide much of his character's charm and emotion behind a calm, stone-faced exterior. Through all that happens to his character Price responds with a dignity to match the high class tenor of his spoken dialogue, but this is a bit of a double-edged sword. One on hand it acts to reinforce the regal nature contained within his heredity, yet on the other hand it obscures much of the character’s rage and internal turmoil. Still Price was excellent in his scene with Lionel, the one opportunity he had to exhibit some emotion. Plus he gave a truly superlative reaction shot at the end unveiling his most deeply felt horror.
Valerie Hobson as Edith also performed the material ably, but was better at bringing forth some heartfelt emotion with her wonderfully nuanced body language. The glum melancholy that she expresses after her husband's death was picture perfect. In many of her scenes there is as much said between her spoken lines as expressed within them. Joan Greenwood was also wonderful as Sibella. The character is not particularly interesting in the beginning but Greenwood does a splendid job of slowly revealing a more intriguing side to her identity until she is seen as a shrewd, conniving schemer herself, with a cunning nearly equal to that of Louis. Among the highlights of her performance is the sarcastic dismissing of Louis’s proposal and tales of future dukedom, the wonderfully emotional performance of her testifying in court and the subtly mischievous conversation she has with Louis, while he was incarcerated. Greenwood breathed life into the role and made Sibella possibly the most interesting character in the film. Sibella was the only one who wasn't a pawn in Louis's schemes and she possessed enough intellect to detect what Louis was up to. In the class warfare theme that the film establishes it's interesting to note that Louis and Sibella, the two characters from more modest, middle class upbringings, were wiser and more keen than their aristocratic counterparts.
Alec Guinness played most of the members of the D’Ascoyne family and brought his standard effortless warmth and brilliance to his many roles. By playing so many different characters Guinness was able to show his tremendous range as an actor and each character he played truly felt like a person with an identity all their own. Young Ascoyne was seen as impudent and smug, Young Henry as innocent, naïve and cheerful, Ascoyne Sr. as old, feeble, yet respectfully polite, Lady Agatha shows a more brash and passionately impulsive side, and Henry the Parson was played as a doddering old fool. His performances as Ascoyne Sr. and Young Henry were the ones that really stood out, with Guinness injecting these characters with a great deal of humanity providing some depth to the portrayal of the family. The only problem with Guinness's part in the film is that he has so much to do and yet so little screen time to do it in. Guinness is really boxed in by the narrative structure and by the fact that in many scenes he is merely a supporting character to Price. His performance as the Parson offers Guinness the only opportunity to perform a proper death scene and many of the lesser known family members like Admiral Horatio and General Rufus are hardly seen at all. In the role of Lady Agatha, Guinness barely gets any real lines of dialogue, which given how well this film was written is a real loss.
Easily the weakest part of the film was the cinematography, which was rather drab, and economical in its approach. I felt as if the overall camerawork was restrained a bit in order to better serve the writing and acting which are the clear strengths of the film. Many scenes were shot at a mid-range distance capturing both characters in conversation and used longer, more fluid takes providing a feel that was very staged and theatrical. The approach did employ some more intimate shots, which for me was most notably used in the jail scene between Louis and Sibella. Here both characters are framed behind iron bars and a more rapid sequence of cutting is used, giving hint to the notion of this pairing’s suddenly more distant relationship.
When the film attempted to add a more cinematic flair to the exposition it was done with mixed results. The upside down shot in the approach of Young Henry was cute at best. The explosion scene of Rufus meeting his end was impactful in its suddenness, but not very visually striking. Also the staging of the ship wreck was just awful and rather pathetic by today's standards. However I did like the subsequent scene of Admiral Horatio's death with him quickly drowning, leaving his captain's hat, a symbol of his position of leadership, to float onward without him. The mise-en-scène was not all that noteworthy but still had some strong points. I liked the second segment between Louis and Sibella in Louis’s apartment, which is cast against a hearth fire, building upon the dialogue used in their earlier conversation. Also the courtroom scenes really stuck with me after watching this film, especially the shot of Sibella’s testimony. In these shots I really didn’t notice Sibella so much as what was behind her, both a painting of a war battle (perhaps adding a sense of increased conflict between these two characters) and an army of onlookers adding some public scrutiny to her and Louis’s plights.
The story was not particularly interesting as a mere revenge tale, with a sorted love triangle adding an additional layer of complexity. In addition the story structure was not very original. The conceit of starting at the end of the story and using a long, protected flashback to tell the tale is one that I had seen before in Kitty Foyle, a film that predates this one. The murders themselves are also conducted with little to no drama and were performed in a rather trite, matter of fact fashion. More thought was clearly applied to the romantic angle, which offered the only intrigue to the narrative. The pace of the film though was ideal, moving briskly, and the story had a superb twist at the end which was legitimately surprising.
The overwhelming theme of the film is the class warfare that exists between those born into posh privilege and the middle class subjects who have to scrap and claw their way towards success. Unlike other films that depict class warfare Kind Hearts and Coronets is more complex in its notions of good and evil. This film contains far more sympathy for the wealthy than what one might be accustomed to. This is largely achieved in part to the performances of Hobson and Guinness. In fact Guinness elicits a great deal of sympathy in his portrayal of Young Henry, a man who is so pleasantly charming and gregarious that crossing paths with Louis becomes a great pity. The character is truly seen as someone who does not deserve to meet an early mortal fate. Despite being billed as a comedy, the film contains a decent level of pathos. On the other side you have Louis, a product of an ill-begotten marriage who is practically born into this world as a killer, with his own father being the first victim. In Louis we see a character who perhaps doesn't despise the D’Ascoynes so much as he despises their rejection of him. Even if he holds contempt for the family, his ultimate aim paradoxically is to be included within their ranks. His carries a stubborn belief that he belongs in their world and this selfish, self-righteous sense of entitlement turns him into a monster. In his quest for revenge he achieves a villainy that surpasses the level of cruelty that he and his mother had been the recipient of. Granted not all the members of the D’Ascoyne family were cast as angels and much like Louis, they didn't get too overly emotional over the death of their relatives. Still to suffer a death by murder is an awfully steep price to pay in exchange for a cold shoulder.
Movie Comparison. The wayward lives of bastard heirs to wealth, is an element that appears decades later in Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot. In this film a rich elderly woman hires a psychic to find her sister's long lost son, a child who was conceived out of wedlock and surreptitiously put up for adoption to avoid the scandal that his presence would have caused. The psychic is really a low-rent con artist, but is offered such a hefty reward that she accepts the assignment and teams up with her cab driver boyfriend to find the man. The heir for the most part has no knowledge of his aristocratic past and has instead been busy acquiring his own wealth through wicked means. By day the heir is an honest jeweler, and by night he is a kidnapper and jewel thief with a partner of his own. It's no surprise that the dialogue and writing is weaker than in Kind Hearts and Coronets, but the acting is far worse as well. Nicholas Colasanto gives a good performance in essentially a cameo role, but apart from this the acting was too wooden and dull. The cinematography was much better (apart from the poorly executed green-screened visuals used during the driving sequences) with a good use of overheard shots which makes the film come off less purely theatrical in its staging. The film also contained the standard Hitchcock touches with some suspenseful jump cutting seen during the heir's attack on the psychic. Another Hitchcock touchstone was the tendency to offer more suspense than drama and with this the pace was horribly slow, with a lot of long drawn out scenes that moved the story gingerly along. The story though was still more intriguing and well balanced between the two opposing team of crooks. Much like Kind Hearts and Coronets, there is a class warfare element, but it's not cast against the heir and his family elders, but rather against the two sets of thieves themselves. One sees this in the way in which they plot (or don't plot) their maneuvers. The working class cabbie often would make cold, blind approaches that even a fool would be suspicious of, while their high end counterparts will pull off a kidnapping with the polished sophistication of professionals, schemes that include elaborate costumes, and detailed intricate timing. The heir even carries some similarities to Louis Mazzini in that he exudes a great deal of class, charm, and intelligence; qualities that would normally be found in a man of his stock, despite the fact that he falls into a life of crime due to the unfortunate circumstances of his birth. In both films, the combination of affluent genes and a life where such luxuries of prestige have to be earned, instead of handed down is presented as a rather toxic cocktail.