The Alec Guinness Collection
December 2002 Reviewed by: Wes Phillips Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Between 1950 and 1955, the British independent film company known as Ealing Studios produced a succession of sophisticated comedies that set a new standard for wit and style. Fifty years later, these films represent a watershed in film comedy rivaled only by the classic American screwball comedies of the 1930s.

The Ealing comedies were not so much a series as a state of mind. Many different directors, screenwriters, and film editors produced them, with the principals frequently changing disciplines. What they had in common were tight, witty writing, an eccentric "Britishness," and a tendency to skewer the foibles of all classes. Oh yes, and the very best of the lot starred Alec Guinness. To celebrate Ealing's centenary, six films were chosen by the British Film Institute as representative of the studio's greatest moments. Four of them starred Guinness and are included in this Anchor Bay set.

In The Alec Guinness Collection, Anchor Bay has chosen four of Guinness's (and Ealing's) finest comedies -- Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit, and The Ladykillers (all also available on separate DVDs) -- and combined them with one of the era's finest non-Ealing farces, Guinness's 1953 The Captain's Paradise (available only in this collection). The Alec Guinness Collection is the rare box set that justifies every bit of effort that went into it and every superlative that can be lavished upon it.

Kind Hearts and Coronets is the darkly hilarious story of Louis Mazzini, ninth in succession to the Duke of D'Ascoyne. One by one, Mazzini kills off his relatives (all played by Guinness), the impediments to his assumption of the title. Other members of the Ealing players inhabit the film, including the glamorous Valerie Hobson, the sultry-voiced Joan Greenwood, and the stalwart Miles Malleson, as a social climbing hangman who prolongs Mazzini's hanging in order to recite his poetry. In its millennial 100-best list, the BFI voted Kind Hearts and Coronets number six.

In 1951, Guinness starred in not one but two Ealing films, both winners: The Lavender Hill Mob and The Man in the White Suit. The Lavender Hill Mob set the template for Guinness comedies at the time. Guinness plays Henry Holland, a bland nebbish of a bank clerk with dreams of wealth, despite a weekly wage of £8, less expenses. Holland masterminds a caper to rob the Bank of England of £1 million in bullion. He is abetted by Stanley Holloway, Sid James, and Alfie Bass. The film's finale, which starts with an antic race down the Eiffel Tower and ends with a full-blown calling-all-cars police chase, is side-achingly hilarious. Director Charles Crichton, by the way, scored another huge chase hit with 1988's A Fish Called Wanda.

The Man in the White Suit, my favorite of the lot, combines social commentary on the new post-war Britain with a classic, cautionary comedy about mixing business and science without conscience. Guinness is so self-prepossessing as to nearly disappear before being outfitted with a phosphorescent white suit (it will fade, he blandly declares). Again, the film takes a while to set its plot in motion and then turns frantic. As with The Lavender Hill Mob, the supporting cast almost steals the film, especially Vida Hope as a dialectics-spouting shop-floor union agitator.

The Ladykillers was Guinness’s last Ealing film, and many film historians deem it the true last of the lot. It's a darker comedy and more of an ensemble piece than the others, since Guinness is one among equals with Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, and Cecil Parker -- all of them upstaged by the delightful Katie Johnson as the doddering yet indomitable Mrs. Wilberforce. One indication of just how strangely twisted The Ladykillers was: the recent news that the Coen brothers are planning a remake. Good luck to them on matching that cast.

The last film and the box's exclusive is The Captain's Paradise, which has its moments but simply does not belong in the company of the other four films. It does have its pleasures, however, such as the young Yvonne DeCarlo as Guinness's passionate Latin-spitfire lover.

The transfers are uniformly crisp and clean. The Ladykillers is the only widescreen offering here -- and the sole color film too. Its colors are subtle, but glorious for all that. Sound quality is generally quite good, although Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Lavender Hill Mob have some distortion and background hiss in places. Each disc features the similar extras -- the film's trailer and a multi-page Guinness biography -- which are welcome enough but scarcely overwhelming.

That's okay; the magic is within the box in the form of four of the finest film comedies ever produced -- beautifully restored and marvelously up-to-the-minute.

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