The Lavender Hill Mob

Alec Guinness Director: Charles Crichton Charles Crichton

Overview

Charles Crichton directed this Ealing caper comedy, with a witty script by T.E.B. Clarke that won an Academy Award. Alec Guinness is Henry Holland, an unassuming transporter of gold bullion who, after working for twenty years with no rewards in sight for his faithful service to his company, decides to reward himself by stealing one million pounds worth of gold. Calling on his old friend Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway), a manufacturer of paperweights and an amateur sculptor, and a couple of Cockney crooks, Lackery (Sidney James) and Shorty (Alfie Bass), they conspire to lift a gold shipment. After absconding with the gold, Henry melts the gold into a collection of souvenir Eiffel Towers, which he then ships off to Paris. But chaos reigns when a group of English schoolgirls purchase the gold towers, and the gang now become embroiled in a wild goose chase to recover their stolen gold.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/03/2019
UPC:	0738329236359
Original Release:	1951
Rating:	NR
Source:	Kl Studio Classics
Region Code:	1
Time:	1:21:00
Sales rank:	21,963

Special Features

Audio Commentary by Film Historian Jeremy Arnold; Introduction by Filmmaker Martin Scorsese; Good Afternoon: Mavis Nicholson Interviews Screenwriter T.E.B. Clarke; Audio Interview with Director Charles Crichton; Theatrical Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Alec Guinness	Henry Holland
Stanley Holloway	Alfred Pendelbury
Sidney James	Lackery Wood
Alfie Bass	Shorty Fisher
Marjorie Fielding	Mrs. Chalk
Ronald Adam	Turner
Edie Martin	Miss Evesham
John Salew	Parkin
Arthur Hambling	Wallis
Gibb McLaughlin	Godwin
John Gregson	Farrow
Clive Morton	Station Sergeant
Frederick Piper	Cafe Owner
Peter Bull	Joe the Gab
Patric Doonan	Craggs
Marie Burke	Senora Gallardo
Audrey Hepburn	Chiquita
Michael Trubshawe	Ambassador
Jacques Cey	Actor
Archie Duncan	Actor
Frank Forsyth	Actor
Fred Griffiths	Actor
Charles Lamb	Actor
Arthur Mullard	Actor
Marie Ney	Actor
Robert Shaw	Actor
Sydney Tafler	Clayton
John Warwick	Actor
Joe Clark	Actor
William Fox	Gregory
Ann Heffernan	Kiosk Girl
Eugene Deckers	Customs Official
Paul Demel	Customs Official
Cyril Chamberlain	Commander
Tony Quinn	Deputy Commander
Christopher Hewett	Inspector Talbot
Meredith Edwards	P.C. Williams
Patrick Barr	Inspector
David Davies	City Policeman
Jacques Brunius	Official
Andrea Malandrinos	Customs Official
Moultrie Kelsall	Detective Superintendant

Technical Credits

T.E.B. Clarke

Charles Crichton	Director
Georges Auric	Score Composer
Michael Balcon	Producer
T.E.B. Clarke	Screenwriter
Stephen Dalby	Sound/Sound Designer
Seth Holt	Editor
Ernest Irving	Musical Direction/Supervision
William Kellner	Art Director
Anthony Mendleson	Costumes/Costume Designer
Syd Pearson	Special Effects
Norman Priggen	Asst. Director
Jeff Seaholme	Camera Operator
Douglas Slocombe	Cinematographer
Ernest Taylor	Makeup
Michael Truman	Associate Producer

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- The Lavender Hill Mob
255. Chapters
1. Chapter 1 [8:03]
2. Chapter 2 [8:41]
3. Chapter 3 [8:41]
4. Chapter 4 [12:25]
5. Chapter 5 [10:41]
6. Chapter 6 [12:40]
7. Chapter 7 [11:50]
8. Chapter 8 [8:15]

Menu

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Editorial Reviews

A 1951 comedy classic from Britain's famed Ealing Studios, The Lavender Hill Mob benefits from droll scripting (by T.E.B. Clarke, who won an Oscar for his screenplay), airy direction (by A Fish Called Wanda's Charles Crichton) and, most of all, the delightfully eccentric performance of Alec Guinness. A classically trained actor with extensive stage experience, Guinness seemed very much at home in the madcap Ealing comedies. Here he plays timid bank clerk Henry Holland, who hatches a scheme for stealing the gold bullion he regularly escorts from refineries to vaults. With the help of a somewhat gormless friend (Stanley Holloway) and two Cockney crooks (Sidney James and Alfie Bass), Henry grabs a cool million in bullion -- which gets melted down, cast into small souvenir replicas of the Eiffel Tower, and shipped to France! Clarke's script abounds with complications and climaxes with a hilarious, masterfully choreographed chase sequence. Crichton is at the top of his game, whisking Guinness and company from one improbable situation to the next and wringing every drop of humor from each. The roles are perfectly cast, and the acting is uniformly excellent (by the way, look closely and you'll spot a young Audrey Hepburn in the opening sequence). This kind of character-driven comedy, sadly, has all but vanished from today's movies, but Lavender Hill Mob is a glorious reminder of an earlier, much funnier era. It also represents a tour de force for Guinness, an accomplished comic actor whose early screen triumphs have been ignored in the wake of his success as Star Wars' Obi-Wan Kenobi. The DVD includes a Guinness biography and the film's theatrical trailer as supplemental features.

Barnes & Noble - Ed Hulse

The Lavender Hill Mob and The Ladykillers can almost serve as companion pieces to each other. Both are hilarious British caper comedies of the 1950s, but both also feature astonishingly different central performances from Alec Guinness. While in The Ladykillers Guinness is a fiendish crook whose criminality is evident from his first appearance, in The Lavender Hill Mob he is a mousy milquetoast named Holland, the unlikeliest of thieves who uses the trust that others place in him to set his plan into motion. Guinness' delightful performance as Holland earned him his first Oscar nomination, and he is supported by a fun cast that includes Stanley Holloway, Sidney James, and Alfie Bass. T.E.B. Clarke's Oscar-winning script ingeniously sets up the story by having Holland recount his tale after-the-fact, and Clarke's characters and story line possess an unpredictability that makes the film easily maintain interest throughout. More than 35 years later, director Charles Crichton made another caper comedy, A Fish Called Wanda, that recaptured the carefree sensibility that makes The Lavender Hill Mob so enjoyable. It is also worth noting that a very young Audrey Hepburn has a brief appearance in the opening scene and veteran character actor Peter Bull can be quickly spotted in an unbilled cameo.

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