Sixty-five years later the classic from Ealing Studios is still subversive, hilarious and distinctly English
It hardly makes sense to think of it as a rerelease, as the 1955 crime caper classic from Ealing Studios is perennially being revisited on screen, and in “Best Of” lists and there have been a number of adaptations, chiefly a middling but well-intentioned remake from the Coen brothers in 2004 featuring Tom Hanks as the mastermind professor first played by Alec Guinness.
The original – now getting a 4K restoration – is subversive, hilarious and as English as Elgar. That’s despite being written by the expatriate
American William Rose and directed by American-born Alexander Mackendrick. Both bring a street-smart American snap to the movie, but with an exquisitely English sensibility: a mixture of cynicism with guileless innocence. The
comedy works because it is as superbly constructed as a deadly-serious noir thriller – there are weirdly distinct echoes of Hitchcock’s The Lodger and Reed’s The Third Man. What Kind Hearts And Coronets did for the serial killer genre, The Ladykillers did for the heist movie (I’ve always preferred it to the equally famous The Lavender Hill Mob.)