THE LAVENDER HILL MOB

UK, 1951, 81 minutes, Black and white.
Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sid James, Alfie Bass, Marjorie Fielding, John Gregson, Clive Morton, Sydney Tafler, Audrey Hepburn.
Directed by Charles Crichton.

The Lavender Hill Mob is considered one of the great classics of English cinema. It was made by Ealing Studios in its heyday. Alec Guinness performed in many of the films from Ealing Studios at this time including his eight-role performance in Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Man in the White Suit. He also appeared to great effect in The Ladykillers. He was to win an Oscar for The Bridge Over the River Kwai in 1957 – and was nominated for an Oscar for this performance.

The film is simple in its presentation of a mild-mannered clerk played by Alec Guinness and an artist played by Stanley Holloway. They dream of better things in life – and decide to plan a robbery, models of the Eiffel Tower in the gold they have stolen. However, the film is told in flashback and it is only at the end that we realise that, fleeing to Argentina, they have been caught.

The film has a very strong supporting cast including Sid James and Alfie Bass as accomplices. It is an early film for John Gregson. There is a brief appearance, striking, by Audrey Hepburn who within two years was to have won an Oscar for Roman Holiday.

The film is British tongue-in-cheek, written by T.E.B. Clarke, a veteran writer who at this time wrote a number of screenplays for Ealing Studios including Hue and Cry, Passport to Pimlico, The Blue Lamp, The Magnet, The Titfield Thunderbolt and Barnacle Bill (All at Sea), also with Alec Guinness. He wrote some more serious screenplays including the adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers in 1960.

The film was directed by Charles Crichton, one of the regular directors for Ealing Studios as well. His films include The Titfield Thunderbolt, The Love Lottery and The Battle of the Sexes with Peter Sellers. He continued directing, especially in television, and collaborated with John Cleese in the late 1980s for A Fish Called Wanda.

1. The humour and irony of the title? Its British tone? The British style of the film? Its presentation of ordinary people in farce, satire, parody?

2. The film is considered a classic comedy. Does it deserve its reputation? Why? How excellent a comedy of manners was it, a crime comedy, a presentation of humorous characters, clever dialogue and wit, humorous sequences?

3. How important were the personalities of the stars: Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sid James? How is their impression enhanced over the years?

4. The importance and quality of the black and white photography, the London and Paris settings, the presentation of crowds, London work, Holland at work and the details of his work, the details of police work, the making of the Eiffel Towers, the police show etc.? How important was atmosphere for the whole film?

5. How clever a crime caper was this film? As a crime comedy of the fifties? The comparison with the genre of the sixties and seventies? The similarities, the differences?

6. Alec Guinness' performance as Holland? How skilful and successful? The presentation of Holland as the ‘little man’, his presentation of his history, his being taken for granted, his meekness and fussiness, his interior ambitions, the irony of his superior's comments, the threat of change? How important was the flashback structure for the film and its humour? What insight into the downtrodden ambitious little man did this performance give?

7. How did the character of Pendlebury contrast with Holland? The jovial man who was equally ambitious, without opportunity? His strengths and his fears? How much insight into this kind of character?

8. The comedy in Lackery and Wood? The way in which they were caught and conscripted for the crime? Their interaction, pressure from wives etc.? The ordinary British criminal and his sense of pride?

9. Comment on the finesse of detail in the film: the van and its work, the preparation for the crime and Holland's use of his routines, the reading of the novels to the old lady, the shouting in the public places about the safe, the trapping of the criminals, the use of shadow, the train, the robbery itself, the police show and the arrest, Pendlebury’s initial arrest and the irony of mistaken identity, Holland falling, into the river etc.?

10. How interesting were the Scotland Yard police and their reports, the continuing interest, the dawning of the truth?

11. The significance of the Paris sequences? The mistake about the letter of the alphabet, the pursuit of the schoolgirls, the exhilaration of the run down the Eiffel Tower and its impact?

12. How successful was the humour at Calais, the desperate attempts to get on the boat etc.?

13. The details of the humour in the school sequence, the getting of the towers, the girl who refused etc.?

14. Why was the police show sequence humorous? The chase within the show?

15. The skill of the dramatization of the car chase, the changing of radio messages, the visualization of the cars in motion etc.?

16. Comment on the amoral tone of crime capers, values and justice. The finale and seeing Holland handcuffed to the police?

15. Does the film deserve its reputation as a classic?