Alec Guinness - The Screen Icons Collection on DVD

EastbourneReviewer from east sussex , 17/12/2004

So much for so called blockbusters, they have all been very disappointing of late. Here we need to go back to 1959 to find a truly excellent film.

Thoroughly entertaining, well acted throughout without any sex or violence, oh I am no prude and do enjoy the odd film with S&V but now and again it makes a very pleasant change to view a film of this high calibre.

  7 out of 9 people found this review helpful

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Guildoon#1 from LONDON , 18/11/2003

Good Ealing comedy. Alec Guiness is, as always, wonderful. The plot by todays standards is thin, but the point of this kind of movie is to enjoy the innocence of yesterday?s movies.

  5 out of 6 people found this review helpful

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BARRIE MACHIN from Reading, England , 01/11/2004

An actor to play one or two parts in a film production could be thought pretty good but to play eight ranks as a unique achievment.

Alec Guinness pulled off such a feat in this film with convincing ease and as a consequence his work never looked back. He became one of the best known character actors we have ever seen. The title of his autobiography reflected this fact! ('My name escapes me').

This film is the British Film Industry at it's best. This delightful period piece is set against the back drop of the Edwardian age with all it's etiquette, voluminous lady's fashions and hats to delight the eye. Joan Greenwood and Valerie Hobson (pre Profumo scandal days)are at their elegant best as the two ladies in our hero Dennis Price's 'life of crime'.

(As he says later 'How happy could I be with either were t'other dear charmer away!')

He disposes of (nearly) all of the eight D'Ascoigne family members that stand between him and the title he so earnestly desires.

The irony of being wrongfully accused of a murder he did NOT do causes him to reflect about how he got to be in this condemned cell at all as he writes his memoirs.

Miles Malleson plays a beautiful cameo role as the hangman - wrestling with how he should address the Duke he is about to hang!

Altogether a delight and one you must see at least once if only to witness the consumate skills of Alec Guinness -(ever to be equalled?, set in an age whose elegance we may never see again either!.

  4 out of 4 people found this review helpful

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Motta80 from West Sussex , 27/10/2004

People love the Ealing comedies with Alec Guinness and for good reason. This doesn't mean they are all as good as rose-tinted views suggest but Kind Hearts And Coronets is a true great.

Guinness excels in a story that gives him multiple characters to play even though he is never the focus of attention of the script. Unlike Peter Sellers in like roles he does not make the film all about him he just blends seemlessly into each role infusing it with a class and sense of joy rare in film.

The story is an amusing one with more than a few surprises up its sleeves. Unmissable.

  4 out of 5 people found this review helpful

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