The plot is wonderfully absurd: Professor Marcus (played with manic energy by Alec Guinness) puts together a gang of diverse criminals to pull off a bank heist. To do so, they take rooms in a lopsided, dreamy house near King’s Cross station in London, pretending to be an amateur string quintet practicing classical music.
Tea, Treachery, and Trains: Why "The Ladykillers" (1955) is Still the Perfect Dark Comedy The Ladykillers
The Most English Films Ever Made | Christopher Fowler website The plot is wonderfully absurd: Professor Marcus (played
The irony is the core: these dangerous men are not defeated by the police, but by their own squeamishness regarding a harmless old woman and their inability to work together. The genius of the film lies in the
The genius of the film lies in the friction between the criminals' desperate, professional plans and Mrs. Wilberforce’s bustling, domestic normalcy.
The only thing standing in their way? Their landlady, the sweet, elderly, and entirely-too-innocent Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson). The Perfect "Ealing" Chaos
If you haven’t seen the original 1955 Ealing Comedy directed by Alexander Mackendrick, you are missing one of the finest blends of farce and noir ever put to film. It is a story so blackly comedic that producer Michael Balcon famously protested, “There are six characters and at the end five of them are dead, and you say it's a comedy?”. Yes, Michael. It is. And it works perfectly. The Setup: A Misfit Gang Meets a Misfit Landlady