"Kind Hearts and Coronets" (BFI Film Classics)

by Michael Newton (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $27.32

  In Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) schemes and murders his way to a dukedom. This title looks into the turbulent personalities that formed the complex style of this film to unravel the fusion of cynicism, contempt, sparkling wit and philosophical curiosity. Perhaps the greatest Ealing comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets is equally a brilliant satire of the English class system and a playful drama of doubles and confused identity. Robert Hamer was a heavy drinker whose career would soon go off the rails, Price was gay and troubled. Michael Newton looks into the turbulent personalities that formed the complex style of the film, with its dandies and blackmailers, aristocrats and assassins. And he unravels that style's fusion of cynicism, contempt, sparkling wit and philosophical curiosity.