Ladykillers (1955)

Ladykillers: Directed by Alexander Mackendrick. With Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers. Five oddball criminals planning a bank robbery rent rooms on a cul-de-sac from an octogenarian widow under the pretext that they are classical musicians.

“One of the Ealing studiou0026#39;s finest achievements, this immensely entertaining crime caper looks at first glance to be pure, inconsequential entertainment. But it doubles as a sly, subtle rummage around the psychology of the respectable, old-fashioned middle classes, with Katie Johnson deserving top billing alongside Alec Guinness (she doesnu0026#39;t get it) for her remarkable turn as the lady in question, the redoubtable Mrs Wilberforce.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003enNo less than the not-quite-ruthless-enough gang of criminals who scheme in her house, she lives in her own private universe with its own particular rules and values. Though she begins the film as the stereotype of a maddeningly officious pillar of local society, it gradually emerges that there is a freer as well as shrewder spirit locked in there than meets the eye. The umbrella she is always losing (she herself suggests that she unconsciously _wants_ to lose it), the escapologist parrot, and most poignantly the memory of a 21st birthday party interrupted by the end of the Victorian age, all hint at an inner life that the comic plot could easily have done without. The screenplay, deservedly Oscar-nominated, has the genius and economy to provide us with all these hints without ever slowing down a tightly-edited and superbly directed narrative.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe other characters are a good deal simpler, but Alec Guinness is in impressively seedy form as u0026#39;Professoru0026#39; Marcus and Cecil Parker makes an appealing Major. Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom donu0026#39;t have a great deal to do and donu0026#39;t try to hog the limelight, but thereu0026#39;s a nice cameo from Frankie Howerd. Ealing went out on a high.”