While I appreciate the unstoppable assassin protagonist of "Kind Hearts and Coronets" -- so modern! -- as Americans we don't really get its most powerful emotional impacts. (1) It's a satire of the British class system, which isn't ours. So the punches don't land as well on our psyches. (2) It's a nostalgic throwback to the era of Ealing Studios comedies. Probably on TV in Britain all through the 60's and 70's, like Gilligan's Island was in the US. You could watch "The Lavender Hill Mob" or "The Man in the White Suit", or "The Ladykillers", and get the same nostalgic response. If you were English.Last night we watched an old [(removed) --admin LadyGeek] British movie from 1949 titled Kind Hearts and Coronets. The American version was cleaned up but we had the original one. It is supposed to be Britain’s 6th best movie. It starred the original ObiWan Kenobi or Alec Guiness, who played 8 characters from one Royal family. It was a black comedy, but most of the comedy was above my head. IMDB gave it an 8.0 rating, but I give it a so-so grade. Vertigo, with Jimmy Stewart is next. Cheers.
So, sure, it's a good movie, but there are dozens of British movies more readily appreciable by American audiences. I'd suggest John Boorman's superb recollection of the Blitz, "Hope and Glory", or David Lean's tale of love and poetry in the Russian revolution, "Dr. Zhivago", or Carol Reed's postwar spy drama, "The Third Man", or Mike Leigh's "Topsy-Turvy", or Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps", or the beautiful people rom-com by Mike Newell, "Four Weddings and a Funeral", or Dupont's great silent Anna May Wong masterpiece, "Piccadilly", or Branagh's tremendous "Hamlet", or Olivier's "Henry V" (the Branagh one is pretty good too), or Cy Endfield's great action piece "Zulu", or the gangster pic that made Bob Hoskin's career, "The Long Good Friday", or the best of the Bond movies, Terence Young's "From Russia with Love". And "Lawrence of Arabia" (also David Lean) is regularly cited as the best movie ever made.
Statistics: Posted by littlerfish — Wed Sep 25, 2024 6:24 pm — Replies 11948 — Views 2268423