Kind Hearts and Coronets

Kind Hearts and Coronets is a 1949 British black comedy film. It features Dennis Price, Joan Greenwood, Valerie Hobson and Alec Guinness; Guinness plays nine characters. The plot is loosely based on the novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal (1907) by Roy Horniman. It concerns Louis D’Ascoyne Mazzini, the son of a woman disowned by her aristocratic family for marrying out of her social class. After her death, Louis decides to take revenge on the family and take the dukedom by murdering the eight people ahead of him in the line of succession to the title.
Michael Balcon, the head of Ealing Studios and the producer of Kind Hearts and Coronets, appointed Robert Hamer as director. Hamer was interested in the film and thought it an interesting project with possibilities of using the English language in a unique way in the film. Filming took place from September 1948 at Leeds Castle and other locations in Kent, and at Ealing Studios. The themes of class and sexual repression run through the film, particularly love between classes.
Kind Hearts and Coronets was released on 13 June 1949 in the United Kingdom, and was well received by the critics. It has continued to receive favourable reviews over the years, and in 1999 it was number six in the British Film Institute’s rating of the Top 100 British films. In 2005 it was included in Time’s list of the top 100 films since 1923.