The Lavender Hill Mob

This Ealing/Alec Guinness feature is slight but entertaining, somewhat silly yet often witty. Guinness and the rest of the cast and production take a mildly interesting and rather implausible story, and give it a feel that helps it rise above most movies of the genre. Guinness and Stanley Holloway work well together, and they end up carrying most of the movie. Guinness is as good as ever, slipping right into the role, rarely missing a good moment, yet never calling undue attention to himself or his character. Sid James and Alfie Bass don't get nearly as much of a chance to stand out, but they do a creditable job when they have the opportunity. The story is not much in terms of believability, but it features a number of clever touches, and it is generally entertaining. It's the kind of story that works much better with an understated approach. In recent years there have been an inordinate number of "heist" movies made, and almost all of them are unbearably inane and/or are senseless glorifications of crime and violence. "The Lavender Hill Mob" makes neither of these mistakes, and it remains more worthwhile than any of the present-day efforts in the genre. It isn't among the very best of the Ealing movies, yet it works well as light entertainment.

This film seems to get high praise all over the place, but in my opinion it isn't as good as 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' or 'The Man in the White Suit', although Alec Guinness is always worth watching. Here he is the quiet bank clerk, 'Dutch' Holland, who has worked at the bank for twenty years supervising the gold bullion on its way to the vaults. He decides he's made for greater things, and in meeting Alfred Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway), a maker of souvenirs including gold-plated lead Eiffel Towers, has an inspired idea. The inclusion of Sid James and Alfie Bass into the plan brings 'The Lavender Hill Mob' together. There are a few laughs here and there but it didn't really grab me. There is an ingenious twist ending which I don't think you'd spot if you hadn't heard about it first, and a fleeting first appearance from Audrey Hepburn early on.

Of the three better known Alec Guiness films to come out of Ealing Studios, the other two being `Kind Hearts and Coronets' and `The Ladykillers,' this is by far the foremost. It is not that the performances are so stunning: Guiness is solid as always and support is ably provided down the line, especially by Stanley Holloway; the important thing is that when you have a script this good you don't NEED great acting. The way they give out a fake to catch burglars in the act and then try to recruit them; the great shots running down the Eiffel Tower staircase laughing hysterically, then being too dizzy at the bottom to chase the car they're after; the growing dread on the faces of Guiness and Holloway as their target goes further and further into police territory; and how about a heist that goes perfectly while everyone involved thinks it's been blown and comes within hair's breadths of giving it all away. An expertly scripted and directed picture that could be remade at the same locations for cheap, or reimagined here in America for next to nothing. I believe the Coens were wrong to go with the flashier but inferior `Ladykillers,' passing over this diamond. Funny enough, out of the three this was the one I was least eager to see. Its ingenuity and solid craftsmanship trumped the drier-than-the-sahara `Kind Hearts' and the frantic flopsweaty unfunnyness of `The Ladykillers,' which I really expected to like. Anyone over 40 can play the Guiness part and come away like roses, though I'd go with Ian McKellen, or Anthony Hopkins, anyone who can radiate that `passed over' look. Too bad Tom Courtenay doesn't sell tickets. What a script, really. The thing is that it didn't have particularly witty or funny dialogue: it didn't need it because the situations were so funny, the dialogue was simply a natural reaction to the absurdity of the moment and quite naturalistic, provoking laughter by also almost improvisatory. No surprise that I just found out Screenwriter TEB Clarke won the 1952 Oscar for adapting it. Not sure what he adapted it from considering he wrote the story too. Should we also be surprised that Charles Crichton went on to direct `A Fish Called Wanda'? This was one talented and underused director.

Although most Americans have little knowledge of his work other than Star Wars, Alec Guinness produced an amazing body of work--particularly in the 1940s-1950s--ranging from dramas to quirky comedies. I particularly love his comedies, as they are so well-done and seem so natural and real on the screen--far different from the usual fare from Hollywood. This is an excellent film overall, but is a little less comedic in tone than some other Guinness films. This doesn't make it bad--just a little lighter in the comedy department and a little heavier on drama. It's the story of some unprofessional robbers and their attempt at a huge heist. All the intricate details have been worked out, all the participants coached and re-coached and all appears to be going like clockwork,....until,....... I won't say more, as it would ruin the surprises along the way. Just understand that the acting, writing and direction are impeccable.

I used to really like this movie, and resented when A Fish Called Wanda pilfered most of it. But on this viewing nothing really stood out. For the life of me, I can't imagine what I thought was funny when I first saw it back in the 70s. There's really only some mild cleverness here and there. It's merits are better enjoyed in a first viewing. The giddy race down the Eiffel Tower still offers a few chuckles and is pretty amazingly assembled from only foreground items and rear-screen footage. The photography around London is nice. But for a short movie, it feels very padded in the final half an hour. It's a very long 57 minutes until you get to the endless sequence about getting on a ship leaving Paris. Then there's a long pointless chase around London. You could toss about 20 minutes of it away nowadays. A special note on the DVD: The DVD menu is a model of understatement, and admirably utilitarian. You just pan to another area on an imposing brick wall every time you click something. No idiot graphic designer mucked things up giving away a major plot point or set piece (by sticking footage in the menu to make their own work look good. DVD menus these days are otherwise just pathetic.

A recognized classic in its day, "The Lavender Hill Mob" is a thick, plodding attempt at showing while crime doesn't pay, it can be fun with the right people involved. Alas, the mob here makes for unengaging company in a film rife with forced humor and labored coincidence. Henry Holland (Alec Guinness) is a junior clerk charged with accompanying bars of gold bullion to his employer's bank. A self- confessed "non-entity," he is taken for granted by all. "His one and only virtue is honesty," a bank executive says. "He's no imagination, no initiative." Unbeknownst to them, however, Holland plans to mastermind the crime of the century, stealing the bullion out of the country in the form of cheap tourist souvenirs with the help of pal Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway), a fed-up gewgaw maker. Can they get away with it? While clever in concept, the plan suffers from lame execution, less by the perpetrators than by screenwriter T. E. B. Clarke, who gives us a comedy of errors where the main joke is how lightly Holland is regarded by those around him. The plot plays out in perfunctory ways, complicated by annoying bolts from the blue like a little girl who won't give up what is a vital piece of evidence simply because she's set on giving it to a friend who happens to be a policeman. The usually brilliant Guinness makes for an awkward lead, with shifting eyes, an annoying lisp (all his R's come out W's), and no real soul. As an actor, Guinness was known for his intellectual approach, but here there's no sense of anything deeper driving the man. He just wants to make a big score because he's the sort no one expects that from. Keith Moyes did a fine job laying out the film's many story weaknesses in his May 2009 review here; my main gripe is its failure to establish much of a rooting interest for either the ill-defined mob (a couple of Cockney caricatures fill out the gang) or the police. Little bits of recognizably pleasing Ealing Studios humor occasionally wiggle up in the background, like an old lady named Mrs. Chalk (Marjorie Fielding) who likes to knit while Holland reads her hard-boiled detective fiction. A run down a spiral staircase at the Eiffel Tower late in the film provides a bracing bit of pure cinema accentuated by Douglas Slocombe's clever lens-work, but the movie kills that excitement by following it with a protracted scene of Holland and Pendlebury running around a French customs house. Many such dull moments weigh down the pacing; while director Charles Crichton's overuse of close-ups add nothing to the comedy. For a studio that released such genially twisted farces as "Kind Hearts And Coronets" and "The Ladykillers" (with Guinness in both films finding ample comedy stores lacking here), one expects more, like some play with the concept of disorganized criminals working out why they are doing what they do. The film provides us with cinema's first chance in seeing two favorite actors of mine, Audrey Hepburn and Robert Shaw, but too many of the secondary players other than Mrs. Chalk are just there to feed lines and push a plot which runs out of the little steam it has after forty minutes or so. The final resolution is a lame sop to 1950s convention that adds nothing to the story. Educated viewers understand this today, and many accept it, but it just doesn't work. Rick couldn't run off with Ilsa at the end of "Casablanca," either, but credit those guys for making that convention play. I didn't dislike the movie that much for what it is; it's pleasant, however dull, in its understated way. But I don't get why it stands out so much given the many finely worked-out and engagingly acted British comedies of the period that don't get half the attention. Back then the idea of rooting for the criminal cut against the grain of the time; today it just feels like a museum piece with no real vitality of its own.

This is a gentle understated English comedy, a classic example of Ealing Studios' output of the 1950s. But paradoxically what makes it most remarkable is its sheer exuberance, the unconcealed glee of Holland and Pendlebury as they revel in the success of their audacious plan. Their first meeting after seeing each other at the police station, the drunken return to their rooms after their celebratory meal and of course the famous descent of the Eiffel Tower, their laughter echoing the giggles of the schoolgirls spiralling round and round before falling dizzily out at the bottom. Painting and sculpture were Pendlebury's wings, his escape from his "unspeakably hideous" business occupation. But when Holland delicately introduces him to his own dream of twenty years' to escape - and not just metaphorically - from life as a nonentity, Pendlebury is drawn in. The scenes in the Balmoral Private Hotel in Lavender Hill are outstanding, and the sparse dialogue allows Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway to shine as Holland suggests to Pendlebury how gold might be smuggled out of the country. "Hohohoho; By Jove, Holland, it is a good job we are both honest men." "It is indeed, Pendlebury." Later in the film, the plot stands less well up to scrutiny but Guinness and Holloway are easily able to carry the viewers' attention. Chases that turn into farces often don't work in this style of British film, but here again Holland and Pendlebury carry such energy and excitement that they fit in well, and I am sure that even in nineteen fifties Britain, large numbers of the audience will have grasped the ironic humour of the policeman singing "Old MacDonald," in addition to those laughing at the straightforward ludicrousness of the scene. Aficionados of British postwar comedy will enjoy this film, and because it lacks the dryness of say, "Kind Hearts and Coronets" or "The Ladykillers" it provides a more accessible introduction for those who are new to this most wonderful of genres.

Ealing studios in Great Britain had a reputation for producing some very droll comedies in the post World War II years and this one was done when Ealing was at its height. Alec Guinness is once again playing a mild mannered schnook of a man who no one notices at all. In fact his own superiors at his job, tell him to his face that his only virtue is a dull, honest dependability with a lack of imagination. Boy how they were wrong. Guinness's job is to supervise the transfer of gold bullion from where it is smelted into bars to the Bank of England. Every working day he accompanies the gold in an armored truck to the bank. And Sir Alec's imagination has been working overtime as to how a robbery could be accomplished. As he's discovered a long time ago, the problem isn't the robbery, it's the fencing of the loot. Well, bigger and more professional criminals have failed to lick that one on occasion. Into Guinness's life walks Stanley Holloway who's the owner of a small foundry that makes lead souvenirs for sale. Another man with a dull life, looking for adventure. Guinness recognizes both a kindred spirit and a solution to his problem. What makes The Lavendar Hill Mob work is the chemistry between Guinness and Holloway. It's so understated, but at the same time, so droll, funny, and touching. These two middle-aged men are living out a fantasy we'd all like to live, even if it means a touch of robbery. Guinness's character name is Henry Holland and Holloway is Alfred Pendlebury. As the friendship grows, they stop referring to each other as Mr. Holland and Mr. Pendlebury. Holloway even gives Holland the gangster nickname of Dutch. They pick up two other amiable allies in petty crooks Sidney James and Alfie Bass. The robbery comes off pretty much as planned, but afterward things don't quite work out. They use Holloway's foundry to make solid gold statues of the Eiffel Tower and send them to Paris to get them out of the country. What follows after that is some pretty funny situations, a mad run down the real Eiffel Tower and also one of the wildest police chase scenes ever filmed. The run down the Eiffel Tower has always been a favorite of mine. When I was a lad, my parents took the family to Washington, DC for a sight seeing tour and I got the brilliant idea of walking down the Washington Monument to see the various commemorative stones in the wall of the Monument. Even after walking down, my whole family felt just like Guinness and Holloway. Sir Alec Guinness got his first Oscar nomination for The Lavendar Hill Mob, but lost the big sweepstakes to Gary Cooper for High Noon. the Lavendar Hill Mob won an Oscar for the screenplay. I understand there will be a remake of it coming out next year. I can't conceive of any remake possibly duplicating the chemistry between Guinness and Holloway.

Alec Guinness (1914-2000) plays a bank clerk who gets an idea to rob his own bank.He does that with the help of his friend Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway) and two professional criminals Lackery (Sid James) and Shorty (Alfie Bass).Lavender Hill Mob is brilliant crime comedy from 1951.The late Alec Guinness does amazing role work and the other actors do also superb job.You can also see the young and beautiful Audrey Hepburn playing Chiquita there.The movie has lots of marvelous scenes.One hilarious scene is the scene where the gang is trying to get to ship but are having all kind of problems with passports and stuff.And the car chase is absolutely brilliant.Watch this British classic movie.It won't let you down I guarantee it.

I had recorded "The Lavender Hill Mob" and thought that this was bound to be good. The Guardian TV guide said it was a "sublime Ealing comedy with an Oscar-winning script." The August edition of Uncut magazine gave it 5 stars and told us that the director Charles Crichton "seduces with his charmingly angled take on post-war London". OK, that doesn't exactly have you foaming at the mouth with anticipation but everyone knows the Ealing comedies are brilliant. Everyone. Ninety minutes or so later I sat in my chair stunned into silence. It wasn't a revelatory stunning such as a really great movie can give you. This was a mind-numbingly bored, can't believe I just watched that, did they swap the real film for a bogus film, pass the whiskey bottle quick type of stunned. How could so many people be so wrong? Why have they lied to me about this "sublime" film? Is it me? I think that the facts speak otherwise. So first let me say that Alec Obi-Wan Guinness and Stanley Holloway act well and that there is a nice chiaroscuro effect reminiscent of German expressionist cinema during a scene in a cellar workshop at night. Other good points are…… oh, I'm sorry, there aren't any other good points. What about the bad points then? The whole thing is set in dreary post-war London and is faithfully dreary throughout – the clothes, the buildings, the people, the acting, everything is dreary to the nth degree. The plot is unremarkable, the script pedestrian. The lighting and camera-work is uninspired. There are only one and a half laughs in the entire film and they are more slightly and elliptically amusing than downright funny laughs. There are no pretty women (oh, sorry Audrey Hepburn appears for 3.7 seconds early on and then disappears but I didn't count this), all the men are nerds of the unfunny type and the action looks like it was filmed by the technical crew from Crossroads. I've seen Bergman films that are funnier than this. Recently I heard someone on the radio drawing a parallel between Ealing comedies and modern British comedies like 4 Weddings and A Funeral and Not the Full Monty. I think that they are right about this. In 40 years time people will see British films of the 1990's and be completely mystified as to how anyone could find most of them either interesting or funny. Weddings, Monty, Lavender Hill – all weak jokes based around the English class system that we are supposed to find endearing and funny but which actually practice a deep and nastily patronising attitude to the working and middle classes. There is no affection for ordinary people in these films just a thinly-disguised disdain. Come the revolution and I'll be lining these films up in Wembley stadium, along with all film trailers, for termination with extreme prejudice.