The Lavender Hill Mob

Movie Information

In Brief: Though not one of the best of the famous Ealing Comedies, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) may just be the best loved of them all. It's a sly yet largely understated (apart from a few exceptional slapstick sequences) caper comedy about a bank transfer agent (Alec Guinness) who hits upon the idea of stealing one of the gold bullion shipments he oversees and having the gold melted down and transformed into innocent looking Eiffel Tower souvenirs. The idea is the towers can be smuggled out of the country with real souvenir ones and go undetected. The problem comes when some are sold as souvenirs. It's all fast and funny with a (literally) giddy stand-out sequence on the stairs of the real Eiffel Tower. Look quick early in the film to spot young Audrey Hepburn in a bit part.
Score:

Genre: Comedy
Director: Charles Crichton
Starring: Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sidney James, Alfie Bass, Marjorie Fielding
Rated: NR

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Tight and reasonably slick for its year (even the dicey process work is pretty good) and country of origin, The Lavender Hill Mob is very nearly the perfect caper comedy. Indeed, it’s only marred by the irony of the fact that Alec Guinness was one of very few actors in British cinema whose films were wholly exportable to the U.S., which was then very resistant to most British movies. That this was not only exportable, but potentially lucratively so made it essential that the film conformed to the still enforced dictates of the 1934 U.S. Production Code. One of the absurdities — and there were many — of the Code was that crime could not be shown to pay. (The idea being that such would set a bad example to apparently weak-minded Americans, who would otherwise know — because the movies to them so — that crime does not pay.) As a result The Lavender Hill Mob had to be made in such a way that its — let’s face it — heroes paid for their sins. It’s frankly a bit of a bummer. But not enough of one to seriously damage the movie or dim its clever comedy.

Classic World Cinema by Courtyard Gallery will present The Lavender Hill Mob Friday, Aug. 28 at 8 p.m. at Phil Mechanic Studios, 109 Roberts St., River Arts District (upstairs in the Railroad Library).  Info: 273-3332, www.ashevillecourtyard.com

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About Ken Hanke
Head film critic for Mountain Xpress from December 2000 until his death in June 2016. Author of books "Ken Russell's Films," "Charlie Chan at the Movies," "A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series," "Tim Burton: An Unauthorized Biography of the Filmmaker."

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