by Ted Davis

Directed by: Alexander Mackendrick

Synopsis: This immaculately crafted and stylized jewel of English comedy has a macabre fairy tale tone, in which the good are protected and rewarded, and the bad are defeated and punished. The superlative cast features Katie Johnson as Mrs. Louisa Wilberforce, an elderly widowed gentlewoman who takes boarders into her comfortably tilted and genteel home, and Alec Guinness as creepy, rabbit-toothed Professor Marcus, a mentally lopsided genius who has the temerity to use Mrs. Wilberforce as the guileless lynchpin in his audacious robbery scheme. The Professor’s motley mob of reprobates is comprised of courteous but shifty Major Claude Courtney (Cecil Parker), short-fused and violent Louis Harvey (Herbert Lom), plump and cheeky Harry Robinson (Peter Sellers), and the perfectly nick-named ‘One-Round’ Lawson (Dennis Green), an addlepated ex-boxer who is the only member of the gang to take a genuine liking to the innocent Mrs. Wilberforce.

Purr Blur: A tuxedo cat is a calm witness to the explosion of panic that ignites the criminal gang when One-Round inadvertently yanks open his cello case and spills out the loot, to the astonishment of Mrs. Wilberforce.

Final Mewsings: The cat would not have been so cool if One-Round’s cello case had been filled with mice.

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