The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth!

Next on the list of targets for my July invasion of British cinematic heritage is Charles Crichton's The Lavender Hill Mob, from 1951.

Historical Background: A decade before the social climate in postwar England produced the Angry Young Men, the nation, in the late forties, was still in the "pulling together" mode but suffering a bit of depression of the national psyche from postwar austerity and the still too evident bomb craters. British filmgoers were badly in need of fare that could lift their sagging spirits and into the void swept Ealing Studios with a new brand of humor that flourished mainly from 1949 to 1955. The so-called Ealing comedies helped develop what is now widely recognized as the distinctly British form of humor: dry, wry, self-deprecating, civilized, and championing the little man in his travails against big business and government bureaucracies. Though Ealing's days of glory were relatively short-lived, the style the studio created proved highly influential, with echoes through the subsequent decades in such films as Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Local Hero (1983), and Waking Ned Devine (1998). It is fair to say that what we now recognize as the British style of humor originated with Ealing Studios.

Ealing Studios had been built in 1931 and through most of the thirties functioned as sound studios for hire on a per film basis for independent production groups. It was Michael Balcon who, after quitting the British unit of MGM, converted Ealing Studios into a production company in its own right. By the end of the forties, Ealing had drawn together one of those rare mixes of talent that fortune and circumstances occasionally bring together in the arts. There was Sir Michael Balcon's leadership, brilliant screenwriters William Rose and T.E.B. Clarke, directors Henry Cornelius, Charles Crichton, Robert Hamer, and Alexander Mackendrick, and, of course, the inimitable Alex Guinness, a man of rare comedic talent. The result was a strings of pearls, beginning with Passport to Pimlico (1949), but including also Whisky Galore! (1949), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Man in a White Suit (1951), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), and The Ladykillers (1955). Guinness's grin and the anarchic flavor of these films proved to be the perfect antidote to the poison of the hyper-civilized and bleak postwar British landscape. When Guinness pulled off a get-rich-quick caper, he was also fulfilling every Brit's secret fantasy in the late forties by providing a kick in the teeth of postwar austerity.

Charles Crichton, the director of The Lavender Hill Mob was born August 6th, 1910 in Wallasey, England. After an education at Oxford, Crichton took a job as a film editor, working on such films as The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Crichton directed his first short in 1941 and his first feature, For Those in Peril, in 1944. Crichton reached his career pinnacle in the late forties and early fifties with such films as Hue and Cry (1947), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), and The Titfield Thunderbold (1953), all sparkling comedies. His best dramatic film was probably The Divided Heart (1954). He reached the low point of his career when he was forced to quit as director of Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), because of an irreconcilable dispute with actor/producer Burt Lancaster. He made a bit of a comeback with A Fish Called Wanda (1988), for which he received an Academy Award nomination as Best Director.

The Story: The plot in this film moves along briskly. Henry Holland (Alec Guinness) is a milquetoast kind of bank employee whose steadfast dependability is something of an office joke. For thirty years, he's worked as an armored-car escort with the utmost punctuality and cautiousness, all the while calculating his opportunity to make off with the fortune in gold bullion that he takes charge of every day. Even if he succeeded in making off with the gold bars, it would be impossible to unload them on the black market unless he could somehow smuggle the cargo out of the country and onto the continent, a near impossibility. In the meanwhile, Holland occupies his time reading crime novels to his landlady at his boarding house in the bleak Lavender Hill district of London.

Holland spots his opportunity when a new tenant moves into the boarding house – Alfred Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway). Pendlebury's business is making knickknacks, such as souvenir models of the Eiffel Tower. Holland reasons that the stolen gold could be melted down and cast into Eiffel Tower ornaments in Pendlebury's establishment. Soon, Holland has coaxed Pendlebury into taking on a share of the scheme.

Their first challenge is to expand their "mob" by adding a couple of seasoned crooks. They'll need help lugging the heavy gold bars, but where are two staid businessmen to go to recruit thugs? They devise an ingenious approach. On a streetcar and in a few other public places, Holland and Pendlebury converse loudly about how the safe at Pendlebury's place of business is broken, despite being full of cash. They then stake the place out, armed with toy guns, awaiting the inevitable arrival of the would-be thief or thieves. Sure enough, first one, then a second, and, finally, a third arrive, though the last of the three turns out to be a policeman. The first two, Lackery (Sid James) and Shorty Fisher (Alfie Bass), are willing enough to join the gang.

The robbery goes off more or less as planned except that good ol' Pendlebury manages to get himself arrested for shoplifting when he absentmindedly walks away from an art vendor's sidewalk display, carrying one of the paintings. In a warehouse, Holloway and the two accomplices transfer the bullion to another vehicle. The idea is then to tie Holloway up, scuff him up a bit, rip his shirt, and dirty his pants so it looks like he put up a struggle. When a couple of Scotland Yard's finest show up sooner than expected, the thugs race off leaving a partially tied, gagged, and blindfolded Holloway to trip about, find a hook to rip his shirt with, roll on the floor, and, finally, create a commotion like a man trying to escape. He plays his part so well that he ends up plunging into the Thames and it's all the police can do to haul him out.

Nevertheless, the gold makes its way to Pendlebury's metalworking shop and is soon molded into mini-Eiffel Towers. Soon, Holland and Pendlebury are on their way to Paris to collect their cargo, which passes customs with no problem. Lackery and Fisher have to stay behind because their wives won't let them travel, but, like all good thieves, they're more than happy to trust their gang mates to wire them their cut once the gold has been peddled.

In Paris, Holland and Pendlebury make their way to the real Eiffel Tower and the nearby tchotchke concession stand where their cargo has been shipped. They quickly discover, to their horror, that six of the gold miniatures have already been sold – to youngsters in a touring group of English schoolgirls. If these souvenirs make their way back to merry-old England, the plot is sure to be discovered, sooner or later, and the police will be on their trails. In a delightful scene, Holland and Pendlebury race down the spiral staircase of the Eiffel Tower, chasing the descending elevator, and end up intoxicated from the whirligig. Then, at the ferryboat landing, Holland and Pendlebury are comically delayed by a series of bureaucratic annoyances, at the ticket window, customs window, and gate, as the ferryboat departs without them. They're forced to return to England in order to entice the girls into trading their "experimental" Eiffel Tower models for conventional ones and a ten-pound note for their trouble. One girl, however, refuses to accept the offer and delivers her gold knickknack to a favorite policeman at the police academy's annual fair.

This leads to a hilarious madcap foot chase through the various exhibits at the fair, followed by an auto chase through the streets of London. Holland and Pendlebury make their getaway in a stolen experimental police car and send misleading messages over the police radio that spark pileups in the manner of the Keystone cops. Do they get away and live happily ever after in the lap of luxury off their stolen goods? I'll only say that Holland does make his way to Rio de Janeiro where he encounters, among other obliging personnel, a pretty young waitress, Chiquita (played in a brief cameo by Audrey Hepburn, before she had acquired fame).

Themes: Comedies don't typically have strong thematic content, but, then again, the Ealing comedies were not merely typical. In the context of their time and place, the Ealing comedies were about the most basic issues on the minds of the English. Everyone was sick of doing without and dreamed of a better life. Guinness's character, in this film as well as some of the other Ealing comedies, simply let his daydreams run away with him, thereby fulfilling the secret nefarious desires of every stifled Brit who was having to do without, playing a role in a staid and highly structured society. We can't all be criminals but we can pursue the fantasy of being one through cinema. When Holland tells Pendlebury to call him "Dutch" (after the famous gangster, Dutch Scultz), we know that he too is play acting. The Lavender Hill Mob is about the roles that we play and the what if we had chosen another one instead.

A film like A Lavender Hill Mob can also make each one of us feel more important than we really are. Like the American comedies by Frank Capra of the thirties (e.g., It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town), the Ealing comedies championed the small man, the ordinary man. Everything about The Lavender Hill Mob is small, from its small budget, to its small, mousy protagonist and small length (at just 78 minutes). Yet, it is partly that smallness that makes us laugh, because in that smallness we see the dreariness of existences like our own suddenly made riotously important. In his bowler hat and steel-rimmed glasses, looking like every other working day stiff of his era, our little hero is able to disappear in a crowd and elude his pursuers. As Henry Holland gives vent to his lawless inclinations, each of us vicariously pursues our own wild and greedy ambitions, harmlessly. The Lavender Hill Mob reminds us that the meek shall inherit the earth, even if it's one stolen shipment of gold bars at a time!

Production Values: With all the madcap slapstick and mayhem, you may or may not notice how genuinely clever the script for this film is. It's wacky and amusing, but also jam-packed with witty and intelligent twists, thanks to the nimble writing of T.E.B. Clarke. Take, for example, the clever use of red herrings. There's the arrival of the policeman during the recruitment process, which, like all of the red herrings, turns out to be a close call but no problem in the end. There's an apparent "arrest" of Holland, which turns out to be the police merely wanting to help the "hero" out after he's pulled from the Thames. Then, the script repeatedly plays with the notion of what's real and what's illusion. Holland fakes having to be "rescued" by the police only to tumble into the river from where he must be genuinely rescued. At the police convention, during the chase, Pendlebury finds himself in a "fake" jail cell that feels to him like the real article. He feels every bit as trapped as though it were a real cell. The entire police exhibition at the academy is supposed to be "fake," in a sense, but ends up as the site for a genuine police pursuit. The police pursuit is thrown into chaos by the illusory messages transmitted by Holland and Pendlebury over their car's radio.

Clarke structures most of the plot as an extended flashback framed by opening and closely segments in Rio de Janeiro. We're led to believe that Holland has gotten away with his caper and is simply recounting how he pulled it off to a dinner companion. This structure forms the basis for a "false ending" – another illusion. It was these skillfully crafted and recurrent twists that gave The Lavender Hill Mob humor its uniquely witty and intelligent flavor and for which Clarke was awarded an Oscar. Sure, it's funny on the surface, but when you stop and think about what you've seen, it's still funnier.

The camera movement for this film is fluid throughout. The sets are well designed and the location shooting in Paris and London is appealing as well. The video transfer for the Anchor Bay DVD is superlative. The audio track is less satisfactory and difficult to understand at low volume.

None of the strengths of the script would mean a thing were the principals of the film not so ideally cast. Just like the film's miniature Eiffel Towers, the film itself was cast in gold. The two leads, Guinness and Holloway, are both gifted comedies, both in their smooth delivery of quick witticisms and their capacity for physical humor. Guinness is continuously amusing, but never overplays his hand. You never get the sense that he is simply drawing attention to himself. Every facial expression and gesture is impeccably timed. Guinness had a long career that included appearances in Great Expectations (1946), Oliver Twist (1948), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Man in a White Suit (1951), The Detective (1954), The Ladykillers (1955), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Our Man in Havana (1959), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Scrooge (1970), Murder by Death (1976), Star Wars (1977), and A Passage to India (1984). It's hard for me to believe that Guinness, the young actor in this film, is the same actor that I came to know and love as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Holloway is undoubtedly best remembered by American viewers as Eliza's father in My Fair Lady (1964), but also had appearances in The Way Ahead (1944), This Happy Breed (1944), Brief Encounter (1945), Hamlet (1948), Passport to Pimlico (1949), The Beggar's Opera (1952), and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970). Guinness and Holloway get strong complementary performances from Sidney James and Alfie Bass. James appears elsewhere in such films as The Detective (1954), A Kid for Two Farthings (1955), Trapeze (1956), and The Story of Esther Costello (1957). Bass's resume includes The Hasty Heart (1949) and Alfie (1966). I also understand that Audrey Hepburn went on to appear in a few additional films!

Bottom-Line: The DVD offers both English and French soundtracks. The only extras are a theatrical trailer and a Guinness biographical sketch. The Lavender Hill Mob is pretty much one long chuckle from beginning to end. For all of its slapstick quality, however, this is a comedy that can stand up to scrutiny. It's an intelligent script with a lot of wry British wit lurking beneath the surface. Guinness never misses an opportunity and is alone worth the price of admissions. The running time is a snappy 81 minutes.