Very well executed

Undescribable Perfection

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Great Film overall

THE LAVENDER HILL MOB is the comedy that abounds extremely healthy humor. The humble bank employee after twenty years of service decided "serve" gold which he has been entrusted to transport, and that purpose devises and organizes perfectly clumsy and ridiculous robbery in which will help him a friend and several professional criminals.This is a movie that will help in the short term to lighten the mood. Here we do not talk about the bad guys, lawlessness, corruption and tolerance in man. The protagonists seem quite "drunken". One of them is quite calm and unobtrusive, the person who apparently would not hurt a fly, and yet the plan rather comical robbery and tremendous work in order to carry out his plan to the end. His friend was impatient and aggressive. They possess a strange propensity for giving up when things get awkward.It is interesting to see two completely different character in the same business. The robbery! Complications are comical and inevitable. Really top-notch entertainment, which offers plenty of British humor, a few funny chases and hilarious conflict in characters, so that pretty authentic location which is certainly surprising. I do not think that in any way making fun of someone or something. The acting is pretty good. Alec Guinness as Henry "Dutch" Holland and Stanley Holloway as Alfred "Al" Pendlebury They are skillful and highly entertaining in pairs. The ingenious and persistent against rash and cunning.

One of the strength's of this excellent comedy, wonderfully played by Guinness & Holloway as an unlikely criminal duo with support of a cast of other familiar faces, is TEB 'Tibby' Clarke's imaginative script which takes an absurd premise and spins it out to its comedic conclusion.Very often I enjoy the set-up and premise of a Ealing comedy as they contain lots of characterisation and little details that then find later expression as the plot gathers pace. For instance, the down at heel boarding house filled with little old ladies, one of whom later appeared in 'The Ladykillers'.It's these little gems of observation as well as the main story that make this film memorable. Early in the film, Holland's ordered existence includes reading pulp thrillers with US criminal slang to one elderly lady as she does her knitting, listening intently and providing commentary on the plot. Later, after the robbery, we see her sitting at tea with two policemen & asking one of them, using contemporary slang, about who they think did the job. The bemused policemen are taken aback, anticipating Mrs Wilberforce talking about 'her aliens' to the desk officers in 'The Ladykillers'.Behind these apparently quaint English Ealing comedies lies real anarchy & subversive wit.

THE LAVENDER HILL MOB is the first of the classic Ealing comedies I've watched. For the first half of the film it's a familiar enough heist story, in which an unlikely group of robbers come together to pull off an audacious robbery involving a huge quantity of gold bullion. So far, so familiar; not bad, but hardly the stuff of greatness. Then the second half kicks in, and things change entirely.The film becomes a journey following the exploits of unlikely duo Stanley Holloway and Alec Guinness as they go on a hunt for part of the missing shipment, which has by now been melted down and turned into miniature Eiffel towers! Suddenly the story is bizarre, madcap, and crammed to the hilt with genuinely laugh out loud comic moments. The dizzying scene on the Eiffel tower is a highlight but it's the chase-themed climax which is the real stuff of greatness.THE LAVENDER HILL MOB is a noteworthy movie for featuring performances from future greats. Audrey Hepburn's here in a single scene as a waitress, while Robert Shaw also makes his debut. You can even see Desmond Llewelyn (Bond's Q) if you look closely enough. The production values are top notch and the film as a whole has a witty and intelligent air to it which is missing from most modern comedies. I can't wait to check out more of the studio's work.

In the late 1940s and 50s, Alec Guinness starred in a series of excellent British comedies ("Kind Hearts and Coronets", "The Man in the White Suit", "The Lady Killers", "The Horse's Mouth" etc), most of which were produced by Ealing Studios. One of the best of these was "The Lavender Hill Mob" (1951), written by T. E. B. Clarke and directed by Charles Crichton.The plot? Guinness plays Dutch, a Bank of England employee who supervises the smelting and transport of gold bullion. Dutch is an apparently quiet, honest and unassuming man, a persona he has spent years cultivating. Dutch's long-term project to cultivate an "air of respectability" is designed to provide cover for the theft of one million pounds worth of gold. To say anymore about the plot would be to ruin the fun. Suffice to say that Dutch's plan involves Eiffel Tower paperweights, the assistance of an artist, two thieves and lots of guts.The 1950s saw the release of a number of classic heist movies ("The Asphalt Jungle", "Rififi", "Bob the Gambler" "Gun Crazy", "The Killing" etc). "The Lavender Hill Mob" is as good as, if not better, than most of these films. It's also unique in that it boasts a thick vein of humour, quintessential English attitudes and the droll "ordinariness" of East London continually subverted. The result is a film which operates both as a slick heist thriller, and a parody of the genre.Before its degeneration, Ealing Studios produced a number of fine, class-conscious films, some of which mounted a serio-comic reconstruction of "post-war Britishness". Adored by a populace caught in the slackening grip of poverty/austerity, these films often saw ordinary men striving for their dreams, working together or standing up against abuse. In "The Lavender Hill Mob" we witness a group of lonely outcasts who live buttoned-up lives but who long for emancipation. Dutch himself, a frail bachelor who is admonished by his bosses for "lacking imagination or ambition", relies on dog-eared copies of detective fiction and naive, private dreams to sustain an anonymous existence. When he (symbolically?) teams up with a local artist, though, Dutch's dreams are given wings. He moves from anonymity to the most famous master thief in all of Europe.Late in his film, Crichton hits us with a moment of ecstasy, Dutch and his compatriots running down the spiral staircases of the Eiffel tower. But though symbolically "at the top of the world", Crichton is careful to emphasise that our once-repressed heroes are quite literally hurling their bodies down the very building that was responsible for their riches; it is precisely at this moment of ecstasy that our heroes' plans begin to unfurl. From this point onwards, Dutch finds himself pulled inexorably back toward containment. A pre-stardom Audrey Hepburn has a brief role.8.5/10 – Classic.