Wonkette Movie Night: Kind Hearts & Coronets
'Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood.'
Kind Hearts & Coronets begins with a man on death row, the camera following the arrival of the hangman on the night before the scheduled execution. The hangman stops before a locked cell door and asks how he should address the condemned man. He is told it is “your grace.”
A peek through the small hole and he sees a man calmly writing at a desk: Duke Louis D'Ascoyne Mazzini. He has written his story of the murders that have landed him in his current situation. It is almost always one of three, love, vengeance, or money. Or more often as not, AOT, K.
Louis’s story starts as vengeance, for his mother, who was denied respect from her titled family in life and a burial in the family tomb in death. As the bodies pile up, all of them acted by the great Alec Guinness, will love be the thing that trips up Louis’s mad plan? Of course it will! It always does.
Kind Hearts & Coronets stars Alec Guinness, Dennis Price, Joan Greenwood, Valerie Hobson, Audrey Fildes, Miles Malleson, Alec Guinness, Alec Guinness, Alec Guinness, Alec Guinness, Alec Guinness, Alec Guinness, and Alec Guinness.
Kind Hearts & Coronets is available for free with ads on Tubi. Free on the Internet Archive. $3.99 in the usual places.
To make requests and see the movie lists and schedules go to WonkMovie.
The animated short is The Colors Of Evil by Phillip Simon and Alyse Miller produced at Ringling College of Art and Design.
Our next Movie Night selection is Jumanji (1995) and it is available with subscription on Peacock and Philo. $3.99 in the usual places.
Another one of those disclaimers, I know there is some seriously fucked up shit going on in the world but we are going on with Movie Night.
𝐁𝐎𝐍𝐔𝐒 𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐀:
The scene where six members of the D'Ascoyne's family, all played by Alec Guinness, are seen together, took two days to film. The camera was set on a specially built platform to minimize movement. In addition, the camera operator spent the night with the camera to ensure that nothing moved it by accident. A frame with six black matte painted optical flat glass windows was set in front of the camera, and the windows opened one at a time so each of the characters could be filmed in turn. The film was then wound back for the next character. Most of the time was spent waiting for Guinness to be made up as the next character.