Kind Hearts and Coronets

Slow to start, this subtly nasty British film picks up speed and wit as it goes.

Credited to artist James Fitton, from this Wiki link, fair use.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). Rating: B

The title comes from a Tennyson line: “kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood.” The poem’s about a rich-born lady who rejects a poor suitor; one should love what’s in a person’s soul, not their lineage or wealth.

Except, here, the sentiment’s flipped on its hinder. The poor man in love with a rich woman is really, a Giant Jerk. And the fun comes from just how willing he is to be an utter cad.

Most film fans will have at least heard of the basic outline. A poor guy is ninth in line to a fabulously rich inheritance. He resolves to murder all the eight family members ahead of him; and they’re all played, in various beards and wigs and costumes, by Alec Guinness.

The murders, for the most part, don’t have enough snappy staging and framing to make you gasp and laugh. There is a neat shot of Guinness, as a naval captain, sinking under water as he vows to go down with the ship. It’s amusing because, in that case, he wasn’t murdered — he was so arrogant he caused the ship to sink, himself. (And it’s loosely inspired by a real incident — and Guinness almost drowned during the shot!)

And Dennis Price, as the sly murderer, doesn’t quite ooze the sleaze you want for this part — not at first. He’s quite believable as a sweet young fellow who feels wronged by his mother’s family — and he was wronged! They disowned his mother for marrying a poor Italian for love, and wouldn’t even pay for her funeral. His childhood sweetheart (Joan Greenwood with her unforgettable voice) teases and toys with him while announcing she’s marrying a rich nincompoop, strictly for the money. You don’t blame the fellow for wanting revenge on his mom’s rich family; and after all, it’s a tasteful postwar British film, we’re not going to see any gruesome decapitations.

Price’s voiceover narration, though, gets pretty nasty, pretty fast, and it’s a hoot. He murders his first relative while the guy’s making out with a young mistress, she’s collateral damage. “I was sorry about the girl,” he intones, “but found some relief in the reflection that she had presumably during the weekend already undergone a fate worse than death.”

He’s a serial killer with proper English form; instead of collecting heads, he’s got a family tree hidden on the backside of an elegant painting. It’s his trophy collection, that tree; he delights in crossing off anyone ahead of him on the list.

Price starts to get slimier and more interesting about halfway through. One relative he actually liked, and regets bumping off — so he decides to woo the widow! After all, it’s nice to comfort widows. And, what’s more, that’ll show his old snobby sweetheart. Who, by the way, he might want to have an affair with, too…

Per the Criterion booklet essay by Philip Kemp, studio head Michael Balcon was unnerved enough by a movie with eight murders… but what he really got squishy over was the sexual tension that builds as this film goes. Not only do characters have unwedded kissy time, but they’re scheming against each other, too.

Price and Greenway are terrific when facing off with the best good manners; it’s like some of the scenes in Dangerous Liasons. And meanwhile, Price’s voiceovers show that he’s just as much of a snobbish ass as his relatives. At one point, he has to murder an aunt ahead of him in line, who’s a suffragette; Price sounds miserable describing that he had to march with sign-carrying rabble. When he meets a former rival fallen on hard times, his narration sneers that this guy lives “on the wrong side of the park.”

Guinness gets to do some amusing snobbery, too — especially when catching a poacher on his precious estate. You can’t kill animals to eat & survive, it's MY land, you worthless peasant!

At the end, trapped in a desperate situation, Price’s ego brings him down; it’s great when you see him made one crucial mistake. Hilariously, the ending had to be altered for the American version; per the Hays Code, crime does not pay. So the British ending (which is clear enough) had to have an extra few seconds added to make this more obvious. Did Ealing Studios think American audiences were too dumb to get it, or did they think American censors were? On the censors, at least, this was probably a safe bet.

The movie’s written/directed by Robert Hamer, and shot by master cinematographer Douglas Slocombe; there’s nothing especially stylish about it, but it looks good. For one shot, where Guinness appears in six roles at once, Slocombe had to cover part of the lens, shoot Guinness in one chair, rewind the film, cover a different part of the lens, shoot Guinness in a different chair, and so on. It took more than a day to do, and Slocombe slept in the studio to make sure nobody accidentally bumped the camara — that would have ruined the whole shot.

Kemp’s Criterion essay has a mini-biography of Robert Hamer; he was a talented, troubled guy. He was gay, and that was definitely illegal in England; upper-middle-class people rarely faced any legal trouble for it, but it sure couldn’t have been an easy existence. He drank too much, married a beard, they were unhappy, they both drank more. The drinking eventually ruined his career and his health; still, he did at least one other classic, 1947’s It Always Rains On Sunday, in which everyone’s dreams turn to ruin. You get the sense Hamer identified with the miserable characters in that one.

Kind Hearts and Coronets is adapted from a long-forgotten book, 1907’s Israel Rank, where the murderer’s mom was disowned by her family for marrying a Jew. So the snobbery of the murderer is sometimes expressed by his snobbery towards Jews. Is that a bigoted author, or an author sharply describing bigotry? Kemp thinks the latter, a rare book buff thinks the former. In any case it was wise to change it for the film.

One guy who definitely wasn’t a snob is poster artist James Fitton, whose work is seen above. Fitton’s dad hung out with labor activists and suffragettes; Fitton Jr. helped form an Artists’ International group making pro-welfare, anti-Nazi posters and pamphlets in the British pre-war years. Interesting fellow! And what a fun day job, doing movie poster art.

There’s going to be a new version of Kind Hearts coming out, possibly this year. Who, pray tell, will be playing the Price role, making deception, seduction, and snobbery all part of a fun, subtly despicable character?

Oh. Glen Powell. From Hit Man and Twisters. Oh.

Don’t see that; see this. I promise you’ll enjoy it more as it goes, especially the matchup of malice at the end. It’s very cleverly written and acted. And if you see the British ending — which you will, the American one's a DVD extra — and think, “hmm, maybe crime Does pay,” then we should put a Hays Code on your TV.