This film screened 12th March 2016.

Our monthly programme strand in which a key film is presented in the context of a notional film canon.

This month, The Bigger Picture turns to comedy, one of the most difficult and unfairly maligned of genres. Although they represented just a small fraction of its output, Ealing Studios is indelibly associated with comedies produced in the space of a decade, such as The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in the White Suit (1951), and of course, The Ladykillers (1955). Along with this last, Kind Hearts And Coronets represents arguably the jewel in Ealing’s crown, a deliciously black comedy in which poor-born Louis D’Ascoyne Mazzini (a wonderfully haughty Dennis Price) decides to murder the eight D’Ascoynes (all played by Alec Guinness) standing between him and a dukedom. The screening will be introduced by IFI Cinema Programmer Kevin Coyne.