"No thank you, Mrs. Wilberforce, no tea!"

I was thinking, today, about the difference between how a joke is structured versus a comedy. A joke typically delivers one big laugh at the end, via the punch line, while comedies, being longer, have to sustain a long string of humorous moment over an hour or two. I have a special fondness, however, for comedies that also deliver a final guffaw, as the end-credits are rolling, because the film has suddenly revealed, through its ending, that it's also one big joke, taken as a whole, in addition to whatever amusement was provided along the way. That's the kind of response that I had to The Ladykillers (1955), not to be confused with the paltry remake, starring Tom Hanks, made by the Coen brothers in 2004. The film being reviewed here was the last of the great Ealing comedies, made in the United Kingdom.

Historical Background: Ealing Studies, under the leadership of Sir Michael Balcon, became a full production company in the late thirties and came into prominence a decade later with a series of brilliant comedies now known as the Ealing comedies. The series included Passport to Pimlico (1949), Whisky Galore! (1949), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Man in a White Suit (1951), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), and The Ladykillers (1955). The leading screenwriters were William Rose and T.E.B. Clarke and the principal directors Henry Cornelius, Charles Crichton, Robert Hamer, and Alexander Mackendrick, who directed the present film. The tone of the films was established by the inimitable talent of Alex Guinness, known in those days chiefly as a comedian. The Ealing comedies helped to define the British style of humor as we know it right down to present times: witty, intelligent, always wry, sometimes droll, and, above all, civilized.

The Story: Mrs. Louise Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) is a dotty old widow who lives alone (except for a parrot) in a ramshackle Victorian townhouse at the end of a dead end street, overlooking a train yard. The house was never repaired after the bomb damage of World War II and some of the walls are askew. Mrs. Wilberforce is a bit askew herself. She's not senile but she's also not fully in tune with reality. She's the embodiment of sweetness and virtue though a bit of a nuisance for the officers at the police station, where she stops in each day to report on UFO's and minor disturbances in the neighborhood. The kindly Superintendent (Jack Warner) receives her information with patience and feigned gratitude while the less delicate officers snicker behind her back.

Today, as Mrs. Wilberforce makes her way home from the police station, a man, lurking in the shadows, follows her ominously. Even after she reaches the safety of her home, shadows of a male figure appear at the windows (underscored dramatically by the music). All of this spooky business is for the benefit of the audience, however, as it transpires entirely outside of the awareness of the implacably docile Mrs. Wilberforce. At last, the doorbell rings and Mrs.Wilberforce answers it, without the slightest second thought. At the door stands a creepy looking but ingratiating sort of man, who introduces himself as Professor Marcus (Alec Guinness, wearing hideous false teeth and an unruly toupee). Marcus has come to see about a room that Mrs. Wilberforce has advertised to let. She's delighted when Marcus tells her that he's an amateur musician and that he'd like to be able to occasionally entertain the other members of his quintet in his room, for practice sessions. She's lonely and a little bit of music in the house will suit her just fine.

Professor Marcus and his friends are not musicians at all, however. They are actually criminals planning to pull off a heist involving an armored car. From the window of his rented room, Marcus, the criminal mastermind of the group, can study the security system of the armored car, as it loads containers full of money from the trains. Furthermore, Marcus plans to use the unwitting Mrs. Wilberforce to help move the cash, once it's stolen, through the police checkpoints. Soon, the other four "musicians" arrive with their instrument cases and are duly introduced to Mrs. Wilberforce, using aliases, of course. First to arrive is Claude (Cecil Parker), a nervous but pleasant bald chap with a mustache, introduced as Major Courtney. Harry (Peter Sellers) and One-Round (Danny Green) are introduced as Mr. Robinson and Mr. Lawson respectively. Harry is the youngest of the group, with a thick mop of hair. One-Round is a muscular, witless thug, somewhat reminiscent of Luca Brasi of The Godfather. Louis (Herbert Lom) arrives last and is introduced as Mr. Harvey. Louis is a classic, no-nonsense gangster type, always sporting the demeanor of a tough guy.

Marcus's little apartment has two rooms, an inner bedroom and an outer sitting room. He sets up the chairs for the "musicians" in the sitting room and then puts on a recording of a Boccherini quintet. Then the gangsters congregate in the bedroom to finalize the details of their heist. There's a problem, however. Mrs. Wilberforce keeps interrupting and each time the men have to scurry into the sitting room, pick up their instruments, and turn off the record player, before letting Mrs. Wilberforce enter. She comes to offer them tea. They decline, but moments later she's back to offer them coffee instead. Then her parrot gets away and she asks the men to help her retrieve it. "Oh dear, my bird is perched on top of that high dresser, and I can't get it down," she says. A bit of slapstick intermingles with the wry situational humor, when, for example, the oversized One-Round tries to stand on an old chair but crashes through its woven seat and becomes trapped in its frame. Then the parrot bites Major Courtney on the nose. And so it goes.

The heist goes relatively uneventfully, except for a near panic on the part of Major Courtney. The help of Mrs. Wilberforce has been enlisted under the guise of a request from Professor Marcus that she pick up a trunk for him at the train station. She does her part, although she stops on the way home, with the loot in her taxi, to meddle in the problems of a fruit vendor and an errant horse. The taxi driver, getting fed up waiting for her, leaves the trunk full of loot on the sidewalk – right outside the door of the police station. Later, Mrs. Wilberforce and the loot are delivered to her home – by the courtesy of the unsuspecting police!

The gangsters are delighted, of course, especially when they are able to open the moneyboxes in the room of Professor Marcus and transfer the bills to their instrument cases. They're all set to make their getaway. All but the dunderheaded One-Round are in the getaway car but the buckle belt on One-Round's cello case gets caught in the door of Mrs. Wilberforce's home. When the lug-head impatiently yanks the case loose, it breaks open, scattering bills all about, just as Mrs. Wilberforce comes to the door. Well, as you might imagine, the good Mrs. Wilberforce is very disappointed with the lads. Still, sweet as she is, she's always looking for the best in everybody and tells the men that she expects them to return the "lolly," which is the British equivalent of "loot." Professor Marcus tries valiantly to convince his landlady that the authorities don't want the money back, what with insurance and all. Major Courtney tosses in a sob story about how he needs the money to save a poor old lady very much like Mrs. Wilberforce. Two of the others argue that Mrs. Wilberforce will be arrested as well, as a member of the gang. She's not buying any of it, however, and, in the meanwhile, she'll stash the money in the locked bedroom, because, as she says, it will spare the men from temptation. She's not out of the room for more than a few seconds before One-Round effortlessly caves the door of the bedroom in with one hand. There's a delightful segment in which four of Mrs. Wilberforce's decrepit old friends arrive for tea and the gangsters have to join the tea party and behave properly.

It's becoming increasing apparent that the men will have to bump off the old lady if they want to get away with the crime. She's already told them that'll she'll be going to the police in the morning. These gangsters have their limits, however, and knocking off a little old lady, especially one as kindly as Mrs. Wilberforce, is not something any of them care to do, even Louis, who has probably killed more people than he can count. Louis tries to settle the issue by requiring the men to draw straws. Major Courtney draws the short one but declares, "I can't, I can't." Finally, he pretends to agree and tells the men to send the old lady upstairs. Meanwhile, he tries to escape out the window with the loot. Bit by bit, in the process of trying to whack the old woman, tensions mount, and the gangsters end up whacking each other instead. I won't add move except to report that there's a final monumental irony when Mrs. Wilberforce goes to the police station to report the crime.

Themes: Despite it's humorous presentation, this film is an old-fashioned moral tale in which simple virtue triumphs over scheming and conniving. Mrs. Wilberforce doesn't really so much outwit the criminals, in this film, as simply out-virtue them. She comes out on top more from goodness and dumb luck than wits. In fact, she's never really even contesting with the gangsters. Her simple kindness carries her through. One of the many reasons for the failure of the remake of this film in 2004 was that the Mrs. Wilberforce character was replaced by a tough-talking old woman, thus substituting a more conventional and less appealing battle-of-wits for the triumph of virtue over corruption.

Production Values: The script is very strong except, perhaps, for the issue of pace. Modern viewers will find that the film drags, at times. I have to admit that I found myself checking the clock a couple of times and I'm pretty used to the slower-than-Hollywood European film pace. The characters are all nicely drawn as individuals. Every character in this film is simultaneously smart and stupid, which, I suppose, makes it rather true to real life. The script draws viewers in right away with some spooky business near the beginning and as soon as Guinness appears at the door in his creepy makeup, you know that you're in for a memorable experience. The humor nicely mixes ghoulish black humor with barbed whimsy and slapstick. There's a lot of skillful stage business and prop humor. The tension in this film derives not so much from the heist itself as in the planning and, especially, the aftermath.

This was the only one of the Ealing comedies to come out in color. The anamorphic widescreen transfer onto DVD very nicely captures the bright hues of the Technicolor film, while also retaining the original aspect ratio of 1.66:1. The sound quality is less than top-notch, making it difficult, at times, to pick up some of the softer-spoken lines. The set is top-notch, especially the Victorian house perched at the end of the road above the rail lines.

The cast is what makes this film special, with top honors going to Alec Guinness and Katie Johnson. Guinness amazes me with his capacity to seem an entirely different person in each of his films. He is the veritable man of a thousand faces. Guinness is heavily made-up here, with a wacky wig and macabre teeth, but he doesn't simply depend on those devices for his laughs. Instead, he owns the part by adopting mannerisms and body language that complement the get-up. He skulks, twitches, and paces about with virtuosity, while advancing his sinister schemes. Guinness's other film appearances included Great Expectations (1946), Oliver Twist (1948), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in a White Suit (1951), The Detective (1954), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Our Man in Havana (1959), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Scrooge (1970), Murder by Death (1976), Star Wars (1977), and A Passage to India (1984).

Although Katie Johnson got only seventh billing in the credits for this film, she deserved second billing behind Guinness. She's absolutely perfect as the epitome of gentility and propriety. She plays the part as neither too clever nor too doddering. Johnson nicely portrays her character's set-in-her-ways nature. She's only got one way of behaving and if she's thrown together with a cabal of crooks, she's still going to be the same precious grandmotherly, busybody nuisance that she always is. It's widely believed that the character Mrs. Wilberforce provided the model for the old lady in the Tweetie Pie cartoons.

This was the first film role of the great Peter Sellers. He does a pretty fair job but shows little of the craftsmanship that he would later develop. Cecil Parker, as Major Courtney, was better than Sellers on this occasion as was also Herbert Lom as Louis. Danny Green held his own as the numbskull One-Round. The characters played by Sellers, Parker, and Green all turn out to be softies, in the end, and the actors do a nice job conveying the ambivalence of their parts. Jack Warner had a nice turn in his small part as The Superintendent.

Bottom-Line: The DVD extras are limited to the theatrical trailer and an Alec Guinness bio. The language options are English and French, but there are no subtitle choices. The film's running time is 91 minutes. You don't find too many films, these days, which combine whimsy and black humor the way that this film does. I suppose the word for that combination is "droll." If you've got a taste for a bit of droll, macabre humor, give this film a try.