Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)
Director: Charles Crichton
Movie review
From Time Out London
Remember when the words ‘British crime comedy’ didn’t inspire a sense of creeping dread? It may not be as smart and savage as ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’, as scabrously political as ‘The Man in the White Suit’ or as downright bloody-minded as ‘The Ladykillers’, but ‘The Lavender Hill Mob’ might be the archetypal Ealing comedy. It’s got everything the studio is famous for – loveable crooks, class conflict, London streets, avuncular bobbies, pratfalls, slapstick, tea, buns and Alec Guinness – but with a Hitchcock-inspired thriller plot that makes it the most pacily enthralling of their features. Guinness and Stanley Holloway play the bumbling suburbanites whose plot to hijack a van full of gold bullion and smuggle it abroad disguised as Eiffel Tower paperweights leads to all manner of hijinks and hysteria. Charles Crichton’s direction is subtle but inventive – check out the snaking, near-single-take opening in a Rio cabana – and the performances, writing and plotting are faultless.Author: Tom Huddleston
Time Out London Issue 2135: July 21 - 27, 2011
Cast & crew
Director: Charles Crichton
Producer: Michael Balcon
Cast: Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sidney James, Alfie Bass, Marjorie Fielding, John Gregson, Clive Morton, Robert Shaw, Audrey Hepburn full cast
Genre(s): Comedy
Duration: 78 mins
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.
What do you think?
Post your review now