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The Ladykillers
Five oddball criminals planning a bank robbery rent rooms on a cul-de-sac from an octogenarian widow under the pretext that they are classical musicians.
1955 · Directed by Alexander Mackendrick · 91 min · Comedy · Crime · Screenplay in the scene database · 15 frames
Plot
Mrs. Wilberforce is a sweet and eccentric old widow who lives alone in a gradually subsiding house, built over the entrance to a railway tunnel in Kings Cross, London. With nothing to occupy her time and an active imagination, she is a frequent visitor to the local police station where she reports fanciful suspicions regarding neighbourhood activities. The officers there humour her but give her reports no credence whatsoever.
She is approached by a sly and sinister character, "Professor" Marcus, who wants to rent rooms in her house. Mrs. Wilberforce is not aware that Marcus has assembled a gang of hardened criminals for a sophisticated security van robbery at the nearby railway station, who plan to use Mrs. Wilberforce's house as a base of operations. The gang includes the jittery and gentlemanly con-man Major Courtney, the Cockney spiv Harry Robinson, the punch-drunk ex-boxer 'One-Round' Lawson and the cruel and vicious continental gangster Louis Harvey. As a cover, Marcus convinces the naive Mrs. Wilberforce that the group is an amateur string quintet using the rooms for rehearsal space. To maintain the deception, the gang members carry musical instruments and play records of Boccherini and Haydn during their planning sessions.
The criminals successfully carry out the heist, and trick Mrs. Wilberforce into retrieving the disguised money from the railway station herself. As the gang departs her house with the loot, One-Round accidentally gets his cello case full of banknotes trapped in the front door. As he pulls the case free, banknotes spill forth while Mrs. Wilberforce looks on. After she learns from a visiting friend that a robbery has taken place nearby, Mrs. Wilberforce finally sees the gang's true colours and informs Marcus that she is going to the police.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: William Rose
- Cinematography: Otto Heller
- Edited by: Jack Harris
- Music: Tristram Cary
- Produced by: Michael Balcon
Cast
- Alec Guinness as Professor Marcus
- Cecil Parker as Claude, alias 'Major Courtney'
- Herbert Lom as Louis, alias 'Mr. Harvey'
- Peter Sellers as Harry, alias 'Mr. Robinson'
- Danny Green as 'One-Round', alias 'Mr. Lawson'
- Katie Johnson as Mrs. Wilberforce
- Jack Warner as The Superintendent
- Philip Stainton as The Sergeant
- Frankie Howerd as The Barrow Boy
- Madge Brindley as Large Lady (uncredited)
Production
- Country: United Kingdom
- Language: English
- Studios: Ealing Studios, Michael Balcon Productions
- Themes: widow, dark comedy, parrot, gang of thieves, money, criminal, old lady, landlady, planning, steam locomotive
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