Review: The Ladykillers (1955)

Droll, ghoulish-looking Prof. Marcus (Sir Alec Guinness) leads a gang of would-be thieves planning to relieve an armoured bank van of its contents. He and his cohorts rent two rooms in the house of little old lady Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson). She’s a funny ‘ol thing whom the local constabulary treat with barely concealed tolerance for her constant appearances at the station to report all kinds of nonsense. Posing as musicians, Marcus and his crew pose as a group of classical musicians, and have a hard time planning the heist with Mrs. Wilberforce’s constant intrusions with tea and the like. The rest of the gang are the respectable-looking but cowardly Major (Cecil Parker), well-dressed, humourless Italianite hoodlum Louis (Herbert Lom), soft-brained and soft-hearted muscle One-Round (Danny Green), and a ‘Teddy Boy’ named Harry (Peter Sellers).

 

The best of the Ealing comedies, this 1955 crime-comedy from director Alexander Mackendrick (the wildly different- and brilliant- American film “Sweet Smell of Success”) and screenwriter William Rose (“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”) is strangely both sweet and macabre. It’s not a gut buster as such, but it does contain great casting, with Katie Johnson showing great comic timing for someone of 77 years of age at the time. All she has to do is turn up in a scene and it provokes a laugh. Her seemingly oblivious nattering on, and somehow managing to foil the central gang of thieves apparently without even realising it for the most part, provides some of the film’s more clever moments. Take the scene where the crims try to convince the old bird that she’s basically an accomplice. Nice try, but she’s not gonna fall for that, even if she doesn’t seem to entirely grasp the whole situation, which just makes it even funnier. It’s like she’s unwittingly smarter than them. Or maybe accidentally smarter.

 

Alec Guinness once again shows why he was pretty much in a league of his own (Surely one of the 10 greatest actors to ever live). He’s incredible here; His ghoulish, wonderfully grotesque Lon Chaney-esque visage (there’s nothing subtle about Guinness here), a memorable entrance, and a nicely droll delivery of lines such as ‘This plan was the best, except for the human element’ and ‘No really good plan could include Mrs. Wilberforce’. The supporting performances by Herbert Lom, Cecil Parker, and Danny Green are funny as well. Playing a humourless wannabe Italian-esque gangster who isn’t as tough as he wants people to think he is, Lom gets to be the best-dressed person in the film. He has a helluva purple suit, and it makes sense that the guy who wants you to think he’s a gangster should dress like a wannabe tough guy’s interpretation of how a real gangster would dress. Cecil Parker is spot-on as the stuffy old Englishman who simply hasn’t got the intestinal fortitude for his chosen line of work. He’s scared of a little old lady for crying out loud! His look of absolute shame when Mrs. Wilberforce cottons on to what they’re up to is pretty funny. If this guy had any courage, it’d be scared of its own shadow. Danny Green almost threatens to steal a few scenes playing the most likeable of the crooks, who despite being the ‘muscle’ is really a sweet-natured mummy’s boy, who can’t help but see Mrs. Wilberforce as a maternal figure. I’m pretty sure he calls her ‘Mrs. Mum’ before correcting himself at one point, which I just thought was adorable. The one dud in the cast is Peter Sellers, unconvincing as a supposed Teddy Boy. The role isn’t funny, and gives Sellers nothing much to work with.

 

The film looks wonderful in colour, with a particular emphasis on greens and purples (or lavender if you want to be more specific). That may seem like an odd combination, but it’s really nice.

 

This isn’t a gut buster like many of the comedies of my childhood in the 80s. It’s a comedy from a gentler time and made by a company that specialised in such things. For me this is the best of them, and easily the best British comedy of the 1950s.  

 

Rating: B+