Kind Hearts and Coronets (Paperback, 2003 Ed.)

In "Kind Hearts and Coronets" (1949) Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) schemes and murders his way to a dukedom. Robert Hamer's pitch-black comedy of manners is legendary for having Alec Guinness play all of Louis's rivals and targets--among them the doddering Reverend Lord Henry D'Ascoyne and the formidably militant suffragette Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne. Perhaps the greatest Ealing comedy, "Kind Hearts and Coronets" is equally a brilliant satire of the English class system and a playful drama of doubles and confused identity.
Hamer was a heavy drinker whose career would soon go off the rails; Price was gay and troubled. Michael Newton looks into the turbulent personalities that formed the complex style of "Kind Hearts and Coronets, "with its dandies and blackmailers, aristocrats and assassins. And he unravels that style's fusion of cynicism, contempt, sparkling wit and philosophical curiosity. 'It is very funny, ' Newton says, 'and, in a demonically subtle way, very wise. And for the bitter, the easy self-deprecators, the procrastinators, the snobs, the junkies of possibility, the flirts, the wits, the wastrels . . . it is perhaps the perfect movie.'