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Kind Hearts and Coronets

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Director Robert Hamer’s fiendishly funny Kind Hearts and Coronets stands as one of Ealing Studios’ greatest triumphs, and one of the most wickedly black comedies ever made. Dennis Price is sublime as an embittered young commoner determined to avenge his mother’s unjust disinheritance by ascending to her family’s dukedom. Unfortunately, eight relatives, all played by the incomparable Alec Guinness, must be eliminated before he can do so.

Special Features

- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- A feature-length BBC documentary on the history of Ealing Studios
- Rare, 70-minute talk show appearance by Alec Guinness, from 1977
- Gallery of archival production and publicity photographs
- Original theatrical trailer
- American ending
- A new essay by film critic Philip Kemp
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

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Really looking forward to this one. It's one of my favorite films, and apart from a complete lack of extras, Anchor Bay's release wasn't too bad, so the film elements must be in pretty good shape to begin with.

With this and the new R2 2-disc release of Whisky Galore (which I haven't picked up yet), maybe there'll a revival of interest in Ealing's output. If so, I hope some American companies begin to realize that Ealing made a number of excellent non-comedies (It Always Rains on Sunday, The Captive Heart, Scott of the Antarctic, etc.).

I suspect that the Daniel Day-Lewis narrated documentary Forever Ealing may show up on this disc, or David Thompson's Alec Guinness: A Secret Man. Although, with a $29.95 MSRP, perhaps I am being overly optimistic.

I'd think a Bruce Eder commentary might be in the running. Oh, how that man loves his classic British cinema.

At the $29.95 price there's likely not to be a lot of xtras...

I'd hope that the point of this release would be to add a lot of extras. The transfer on the Anchor Bay DVD hardly cries out for a re-release, especially considering that the original negative is lost.

Gregory wrote:the original negative is lost.

I did not know this and had no idea! That actually increases my admiration of the Anchor Bay/Studio Canal partnership.

I'd definitely like to see a couple of solid extras, but I'm not sure that Forever Ealing will be in the running. Doesn't Warner Home Video own the American distribution rights to that docu? (TCM has shown it, and I think WHV released it as an extra in an R2 set.) If so, Warner will probably hold on to it, since they actually own the rights to the last five or six Ealing titles from 1956-57. (That's after Balcon sold the physical Ealing studios and struck a deal with MGM, his old employer from the 1930s.) Unfortunately, the last five or six Ealing films are pretty weak, except for Guinness' Barnacle Bill, so I have no idea when Warner will get around to releasing those.

I own the Anchor Bay edition, and while the transfer is great there's hardly any extras. Great to see this masterpiece in the collection.

Roger Eberts's Great Movie review

I had a very lukewarm response to this film on my first viewing (I much prefer The Ladykillers). I love dry British humor and black comedies, but I barely even smiled. I'll probably give this one a rental to see if my opinion has changed.

A double disc-er, then, which means that Forever Ealing or the Alec Guinness documentary (or both?) could well be in the cards... Anyone knows what the respective lengths of the documentaries are?

Forever Ealing runs about 50-55 minutes.

Alec Guinness: A Secret Man runs 90 minutes.

Kind Hearts is one of the few Ealings I can really get into.

Image Entertainment not only disagrees with the price (they list the release at $39.95), but they also label the release as a double disc set.

Regardless, the supplements listed are the same as Criterion's. Either Criterion is pondering a double-disc bump for the title, or Image is just misinformed.

Well, if Criterion are indeed going to use the Forever Ealing and the Alec Guinness: A Secret Man docus, as we're speculating, then they'd definitely need two discs. And to be honest, that's about the only way they could convince me to upgrade from my Anchor Bay edition. This release needs to be rather special, and I hope it is.

It's also worth noting that the Criterion catalog number for this title ends in "D" -- which often happens with their multi-disc releases. (Of course, I don't offer this as definitive proof; we'll learn soon enough. But Young Mr. Lincoln got bumped up to a two-disc release eventually, too.)

The disc has now been bumped up to $39.95 on Criterion's site, though no new specs have been added. Mulvaney pestering in progress.

The Virgin Spring and Metropolitan also have a 'D' at the end of their catalogue number, and both discs have "More!" listed in their specs. I thought that was worth mentioning.

The D doesn't mean it's a 2-disc set. Single-disc releases also carry it. I think those numbers (the CC1516D for example) are just Image Entertainment's catalog numbers. I think anyways. You can usually (though not always) find these numbers on the releases that weren't licenced to Criterion by Home Vision (Home Vision's, or at least the ones I figure were distributed by Home Vision, were in this format: THI060, the first 3 letters of the title and then just a number sequence.)

Off the News Section of the website

Criterion Collection wrote:Our upcoming release of Ealing Studios' sublime black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets is now a double-disc set. Along with a new, restored digital transfer of the film, this special edition package will include a feature-length BBC documentary on the history of Ealing and a rare, 70-minute talk show appearance by star Alec Guinness, from 1977. Watch for Kind Hearts and Coronets in February.

Alec Guinness Interviews from 77? I can't imagine this has much to do with Kind Hearts...

If the Alec Guinness chat is from Parkinson (as the upcoming Henry Fonda piece on Young Mr. Lincoln is) then, without doubt, the upcoming Mr. Arkadin will also contain the 60 minute chat Parkinson conducted with Orson Welles in the mid-70s. Fingers and toes crossed.

Andre Jurieu wrote:Off the News Section of the website

Criterion Collection wrote:Our upcoming release of Ealing Studios' sublime black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets is now a double-disc set. Along with a new, restored digital transfer of the film, this special edition package will include a feature-length BBC documentary on the history of Ealing

Does anybody know which BBC documentary they're talking about. It clearly can't be Forever Ealing anymore, since that docu is neither "feature-length" (at only 55 minutes) or from the BBC. (Channel 4 made Forever Ealing in association with Studio Canal.) I did a search and discovered that Roly Keating oversaw production, but I can't learn anything else about this BBC docu -- not even its name.

I guess we'll find out soon enough. But it's kind of annoying to be in the dark.

The back cover.

An 'American ending', eh? Intriguing.

Cinéslob wrote:An 'American ending', eh? Intriguing.

I believe this has something partly to do with the "eenie, meenie, minie, moe" exchange between Dennis Price and Joan Greenwood near the end. Anyone who knows much about older British popular culture knows that they certainly don't catch a "tiger" by the toe...! It's basically the same deal as when Warner Bros. renamed Richard Todd's dog to "Trigger" for the American release of The Dam Busters.

Cinéslob wrote:An 'American ending', eh? Intriguing.

I have read somewhere that the American ending is that the memoirs are shown in the hands of the authorities - in the British version they're not, so in theory Louis could still get away with his crimes. But for US audiences, crime must not pay.