The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

Charles Crichton

Writer:

T.E.B. Clarke (screenplay)

Release Date:

10 September 1951 (Sweden)

Genre:

Comedy | Crime

Tagline:

He stole $3,000,000 in gold and that's a lot of BULLion!

Plot:

A meek bank clerk who oversees the shipment of bullion joins with an eccentric neighbor to steal gold bars and smuggle them out of the country as miniature Eifel Towers.

Plot Keywords:

Gold | Bank | Souvenir | France | Tour

Awards:

Won Oscar. Another 2 wins & 4 nominations

Cast

Alec Guinness	...	Henry Holland
Stanley Holloway	...	Alfred Pendlebury
Sid James	...	Lackery (as Sidney James)
Alfie Bass	...	Shorty Fisher
Marjorie Fielding	...	Mrs. Chalk
Edie Martin	...	Miss Evesham
John Salew	...	Parkin
Ronald Adam	...	Turner
Arthur Hambling	...	Wallis
Gibb McLaughlin	...	Godwin
John Gregson	...	Farrow
Clive Morton	...	Station Sergeant
Sydney Tafler	...	Clayton
Marie Burke	...	Senora Gallardo
Audrey Hepburn	...	Chiquita

Runtime:

UK:81 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English | French | Portuguese

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Iceland:L | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | UK:U

Filming Locations:

Bank Underground Station, London, England, UK

Company:

Ealing Studios

Trivia:

Ealing Studios, planning a bank-robbery film, asked the Bank of England to devise a way in which a million pounds could be stolen from the bank. A special committee was created to come up with an idea, and their plan is the one used in the film.

Goofs:

Continuity: After the raid we see the maroon (dark colored) bullion van being driven into an abandoned warehouse to be emptied (33mins 10 secs into the movie). In the next short shot of the van parking, the van has now become a light colored van. After that we see the dark colored van again.

Quotes:

Miss Evesham: [greeting Holland and Pendlebury on their tipsy return from a celebratory dinner] You naughty men, waking us all up at this hour.
Pendlebury: A thousand pardons.
Henry Holland: [Restraining Pendlebury as he's about to enter] Wipe your feet.
Pendlebury: A little celebration.
Miss Evesham: Already? Your holidays don't start till tomorrow.
Henry Holland: Today is tomorrow.
Pendlebury: "O polished perturbation! Golden care! That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide!" Henry IV, part two.
Miss Evesham: Good night, you naughty men. Don't forget to switch off.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Batman: Louie's Lethal Lilac Time (#3.18)" (1968)

Soundtrack:

Music

Funny, at times hilarious.

Ealing Studios turned out a series of comic gems in the late 40s and early 50s and this is a good example. Only a curmudgeon would not laugh aloud during some of the scenes.

The plot, briefly, involves a clever bank clerk (Guiness) developing a plan with a die caster (Holloway) to steal several million pounds of gold bullion, recast it into tourist knicknacks in the shape of Eiffel Tower paperweights, and ship it to Paris to sell on the black market. They recruit two professional thieves to help them.

It may not be Ealing's best comedy (my vote would be for "The Lady Killers") but it's more than funny enough. I'll just give three scenes as examples.

(1) Holloway and Guiness, two honest men, need to recruit what they call a "mob" but have no idea how to go about it. What I mean is -- how would YOU go about recruiting criminal assistants? What they do is go to crowded places of low repute -- saloons, prize fights, the underground -- and shout at each other through the noise about the safe being broken at such-and-such an address and all that money having to be left in it. Then they hole up at the address and wait for the burglars to arrive.

(2) A scene at the Eiffel Tower in which they discover that half a dozen of the gold paperweights instead of the usual leaden ones have been sold to some English schoolgirls. They watch horrified as the door closes and the elevator carrying the girls begins its descent, and they decide to rush down the tightly spiraling staircase to ground level, trying to beat the elevator. By the time they reach the street they've been spun around so many times that they can't stop laughing and are unable to stop twirling around until they fall down.

(3) After the robbery, in an empty warehouse soon to be searched by the police, Guiness must be tied up, gagged, and blindfolded with tape. Then his clothes must be torn and dirtied so that it appears he put up a fight before the gold was taken. But the police arrive too soon, and the others beat it, leaving Guiness standing alone, tied up, and blindfolded, but not dirty. He stumbles about blindly, trying to blow the tape from his mouth, getting his feet caught in discarded bicycle wheels, until he falls into the Thames.

Probably the weakest part of the movie is near the end, when police cars wind up chasing one another because of confusing messages. The scene could have been lifted from Laurel and Hardy. It's a little silly. (Why didn't Guiness and Holloway park the stolen car, get out, and walk away?) But that's a minor consideration.

What surprises me about some of these comedies is that they're able to make us laugh despite the dreary atmosphere. The streets of London look awfully dismal in this grainy black and white film. Some of them were still charred wrecks left over from the Blitz. But it doesn't dampen the comedy at all. Following the successful robbery a drunken Guiness and Holloway return to their boarding house to be chided by their landlady for being "naughty". One pulls the other aside, chuckling conspiratorially, and the two agree to call each other "Al" and "Dutch" -- two REAL BIG gangsters for you.

If you need to use up some neuropeptides this is your movie.