THE LAVENDER HILL MOB
A film review by Edwin Jahiel
Copyright 1995 Edwin Jahiel
(UK, 1951) Directed by Charles Crichton.
This marvelous Oscar-winning movie (Best Story and Screenplay by T.E.B. Clarke) was one of those priceless comedies (mostly from the Ealing Studios) that made British screen humor triumph in the 1950s.
Oscar-nominated Alec Guinness is a milquetoastish bank employee who dreams up one of those perfect crimes -- a gold-bullion caper -- that never turn out to be perfect. Successful at first, the likable malefactors are thrown into a desperate, frustrating chase after incriminating evidence -- miniature Eiffel Towers. The hunt takes them to Paris, then back to England. There is wonderful irony as the film climaxes with the duo tracking down the last of the statuettes inside a Police show.
The acting by Guinness and Holloway is perfect . They are excellently supported by their acolytes Sidney James and Alfie Bass. Audrey Hepburn, then a bit actress in her fourth film, has a a microscopic part. Thirteen years later, in MY FAIR LADY, as a big star playing Liza Doolittle, she would be reunited with Stanley Holloway who played her father.
THE LAVENDER HILL MOB is a delight of witty structure and briskly economical pacing. Guinness had come to world-wide attention with his multiple roles in KIND HEARS AND CORONETS (1949). With THE LAVENDER HILL MOB the comic, idiosyncratic Guinness persona itself was launched, in all its variations of quiet diffidence, cunning, stubbornness and that famous half-smile that seems to say "I know something you don't know."
THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT followed that same year and was also nominated in the straight screenplay category. Then came more comedies: THE PROMOTER, THE CAPTAIN'S PARADISE, THE DETECTIVE, THE LADY KILLERS, and more films with serious, funny or in-between roles, all unique. THE LAVENDER HILL MOB is the kind of movie where you root for the thieves, but in its period films lacked the gumption to come out with the conclusion that often "crime does pay."
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