Événement

NOIR CITY 15: THE LADYKILLERS / THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN

Tuesday, January 24

The price of admission gets you into the double bill.

7:15
THE LADYKILLERS
(England, 1955. Ealing Studios. 97 min.)

Screenplay and story by William Rose
Produced by Michael Balcon. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick

Leave it to England's fabled Ealing Studios to produce the greatest comic caper ever made. Criminal mastermind Alec Guinness has the perfect plan for a daring robbery. He's assembled the right team, among them Peter Sellers. He's devised the ideal cover -- he and the lads masquerading as a string quintet. What he can't possibly prepare for is the righteous meddling of their host, Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson). William Rose claimed his script came to him in a dream; under the direction of Mackendrick (Sweet Smell of Success), it plays like one, too. Presented digitally

9:10
THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN
(England, 1960. Allied Film Makers / J. Arthur Rank (Criterion). 116 min.)

Screenplay by Bryan Forbes, from the novel by John Boland
Produced by Michael Relph. Directed by Basil Dearden

Time for a proper British heist, what? We meet Lieutenant Colonel Hyde climbing out of a sewer in a tuxedo. Chapped at being cashiered from the service, he's decided to rob a bank using a pulp novel as his manual and a band of stiff-upper-lip miscreants adrift after World War II as his crew. A who's who of beloved UK character actors, including Jack Hawkins, Roger Livesey, Richard Attenborough, (and screenwriter Forbes in an acting role), take their marching orders from Ealing Studios veteran Basil Dearden, for whom this was a career high point. Presented digitally