Kind Hearts and Coronets
| Kind Hearts and Coronets | |
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Original British film poster by James Fitton
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| Directed by | Robert Hamer |
| Produced by | |
| Screenplay by |
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| Based on |
Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by Roy Horniman |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Ernest Irving |
| Cinematography | Douglas Slocombe |
| Edited by | Peter Tanner |
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Production
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| Distributed by | General Film Distributors (UK) |
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Release date
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Running time
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106 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Kind Hearts and Coronets is a British black comedy film of 1949 starring Dennis Price, Joan Greenwood, Valerie Hobson, and Alec Guinness. Guinness plays eight distinct characters. The plot is loosely based on the novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal (1907) by Roy Horniman, with the screenplay written by Robert Hamer and John Dighton and the film directed by Hamer. The title refers to a line in Tennyson's poem "Lady Clara Vere de Vere": "Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood."
Kind Hearts and Coronets is listed in Time's top 100 and also in the BFI Top 100 British films. In 2011 the film was digitally restored and re-released in selected British cinemas.
In Edwardian England, Louis D'Ascoyne Mazzini, 10th Duke of Chalfont awaits his hanging the following morning. As he writes his memoirs, the events of his life are shown in flashback.
His mother, the youngest daughter of the 7th Duke of Chalfont, eloped with an Italian opera singer named Mazzini and was disowned by her family for marrying beneath her station. Even so, the Mazzinis were poor, but happy, until Mazzini died upon seeing Louis, his newborn son, for the first time.
In the aftermath, Louis' widowed mother raises him on the history of her family and told him how, unlike other aristocratic titles, the dukedom of Chalfont, can descend through female heirs. Louis' only childhood friends are Sibella and her brother, a local doctor's children.
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