An investigation into the strategies of detachment employed in Robert Hamer's Kind Hearts and Coronets
by Simon Justice
Simon Justice is a graduate of the University of Warwick, England, with an MA in Film and Television Studies and a BA in Film and Literature. He is currently studying at the University of Nottingham on a teacher training course. He hopes to start a PhD this year while simultaneously beginning to teach Film and Media Studies at University level.
The name Ealing Studios is synonymous with film comedy and of all the celebrated works to come out of that legendary studio, Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, Ealing, GB, 1949) is the film often now heralded as the very best. It has achieved this status despite being somewhat of an atypical piece, and one that critics have often found difficult to fully decode. Charles Barr’s comment on the movie is indicative of this when he writes:
“Kind Hearts is the hardest of the Ealing films to write about: its meaning is so little set out on the surface, so little reducible to clear terms…[Kind Hearts and Coronets] is a particularly enigmatic and ‘irreducible’ work.” (Barr 1993, 130).
This critical stance arises from the fact that Kind Hearts stands out from its contemporaries as a jet black comedy centred on the serial killing exploits of its central protagonist. A young man named Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) learns from his mother that he is in distant line to become Duke of Chalfont, a reality that the present Duke will not accept due to his mother’s rejection from the family after marrying beneath her. Upon his mother’s death, Louis decides to systematically murder all the remaining members of the D’Ascoyne family who stand in the way of his becoming Duke. The D’Ascoynes are all played by the same actor in Alec Guinness, a further twist to lift the movie above the ordinary. Hardly the standard subject matter for a comedy picture then, and definitely not typical of the Ealing output, but the film is executed perfectly in both performance and direction and remains undeniably funny over 50 years since it was released.
As with any other black comedy, the central plot and thematic concerns of the movie are based on the apparent paradox that the macabre can be found to be funny. A work that features multiple murders over its runtime is not going to be intrinsically or naturally funny, so how do the performers of black comedy make us laugh? The concern in this essay is with the cinema but it should be pointed out that the tragicomic is a form of entertainment that has existed for many hundreds of years. Since the days of Shakespeare and beyond the performing arts have provided opportunities for humour where one might not expect them in the real world. J. L. Styan’s book The Dark Comedy is a study of just that and he makes the point that:
“There is considerable discrepancy between the things we find comic in life and those contrived on stage: a man falling on his face in the street may be an object of pathos, but on the stage an object of derision” (Styan 1968, 39).
By the very nature of their continued success through time, pieces of darkly comic entertainment must employ certain strategies in order to successfully present their jokes. These strategies are of course medium specific, with the technology involved in film comedy able to manipulate the visual plane to a far greater degree than the theatre. It is at this point that Styan should be left as he is primarily concerned with the theatre but much of what he goes onto mention is concerned with the relationship between text and audience, a common cinematic concern. As well as Kind Hearts, the huge success of films such as Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra, Warner Bros., USA, 1944) and the more contemporary Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, Channel Four, GB, 1996) have shown that black comedy can be fruitfully transferred to the silver screen and that the former is not merely an anomaly.
As there is in the theatre then, there must be certain methods that the cinema employs in order to present a successful black comedy. There is no one universal technique but a close analysis of a text’s formal construction and mise-en-scène can often reveal much of interest. Close textual analysis is the tool that will form the basis of the remainder of this essay as I aim to demonstrate exactly how the black comedy of Kind Hearts is made to function on screen. It is my contention that the film invokes a sense of detachment experienced by the viewer, allowing he or she to take a step back from the action as it were and accept events that might be previously termed unacceptable. There is not an ultimate method used but I want to detail the use of several cinematic tools that individually distance in their different ways, the combined effect of which being the text’s undeniable success.
The use of terms such as ‘distancing’ and ‘detachment’ with regard to the cinema refers to an on going and ever complex debate into the nature of the cinema and the viewer’s relationship to what he or she sees. There is neither the time nor the necessity to go into that here other than to provide a brief outlook as to the relevance to this investigation. If one is talking about being ‘distanced’ from the events on a screen or a stage then one is also assuming that there is a traditional viewing position that binds text and audience. In the cinema the basic model is of a motivated protagonist with whom the audience can empathise as he makes his or her way around a recognisable filmic world. The analysis that follows will argue that these elements can be seen to be both absent and modified in Kind Hearts, with detachment used to distort this common perspective. The film is trying to convince its viewer to eschew his or her standard viewing position and enjoy the darker side of life as entertainment.
“The most controversial aspect of Kind Hearts and Coronets is the screenplay and the form it takes. No other English language film has relied so heavily on its dialogue and commentary” (Stanbrook 1964 in Hamer 1984, 11).
So Alan Stanbrook describes a charge that has often been levelled at Kind Hearts, namely that the film is too ‘wordy’ and that this is to the detriment of its cinematic qualities. I believe that the movie is indeed well aware of its reliance on the intricacies of the English language, but that it uses this cinematically as a strategy of detachment. I will return my attention to the prevalence of the spoken word in the form of voiceover later but first I want to look at the presentation of the written word.
If we return again to the previously mentioned paradox of murder as something that can be enjoyed as entertainment, an essay written by George Orwell in 1946 provides a point of interest. ‘Decline of the English Murder’ is a short but suitably macabre essay bemoaning the lack of imagination displayed by British murderers in committing their crimes. Indeed, the exploits of Louis Mazzini in Kind Hearts can be seen as an answer to Orwell’s anxieties as his crimes grow more inventive as the film goes on, providing much of the creativity the author was rather cynically crying out for. As the article was written only a few years prior to the release of Kind Hearts, ‘Decline of the English Murder’ provides a valuable insight into the contemporary mentality of a member of the British public. What proves particularly significant when considering Kind Hearts is when Orwell discusses exactly why murder might be seen to be such a desirable media topic:
“It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war…You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World…In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about?
Naturally, about a murder…Of the nine cases [in recent history], at least four have had successful novels based on them, one has been made into a popular melodrama, and the amount of literature surrounding them…would make a considerable library” (Orwell 1965, 10) [my brackets].
It is then the written media that Orwell links to the notion of murder and entertainment. Novels, newspapers and court reports are mentioned over the course of his text, all of which are produced to make profit from a cause célèbre or a particularly gruesome crime. No matter which way one perceives it, the general public of the 1940s liked to read about violent crime, a fact that remains true of society nearly 60 years on. Correspondingly, it is the written word that brings murder into the home, in the form of quotations and reported stories that are presented to the reader as an account of a crime. This crime will be familiar to them, but only because it involves people they only know by name. We can see at work here a simultaneous process of familiarisation to a certain extent while also detaching the reader, as although he or she will recognise names and events, their experience of the crime comes not from first hand experience but from a written construct from varied sources. Words are used to distance the member of the public from the true horror of the crime, letting it become a media event and consequently lessening the impact. This use of the written word as a distancing device can be seen at work in Kind Hearts, as the following analysis aims to illustrate.
Louis tells the whole narrative of Kind Hearts in retrospect as his persistent voiceover recounts his journey from poverty to his present position as a jailed Duke. The reason for the tale being told in the past tense is the fact that Louis is effectively reading his memoirs back to the viewer, written as he awaits his impending execution. Before the voiceover can propel the narrative through the story proper, there are two early sequences that foreground the relevance of the written word. The first of these occurs in the very first scene of the movie, as the executioner (Miles Malleson) approaches the prison gates. Pinned on the wall outside is a beautifully presented placard announcing the imminent hanging of the Duke of Chalfont. In the surrounding gloom, the sign is contrastingly well lit and emphasised by the length of time in which the shot is held in close-up, which is a good five seconds (Fig 1).
The image is a telling one and is reprised soon after by a second close-up of a written document, this time being the title page of Louis’ memoirs (Fig 2). Again immaculately written and held to fill the frame, the text reasserts Louis’ status as Duke while also showing an awareness of a potential audience for the story of his crime. Mazzini rather sarcastically hopes that those who read it ‘won’t find the contents disinteresting’ and thus reinforces the notion of criminal as celebrity and public interest factor inferred by Orwell’s essay. This visual concern with public attention is also reflected in the dialogue, as Louis sardonically notes that his modest choice of coffee and toast for breakfast will ‘disappoint the newspaper reading public’.
As Louis displays his awareness of his ‘public’, one can readily substitute the term ‘newspaper reading’ for the ‘movie going’ public with which both director and studio were concerned. Though Kind Hearts is clearly set in times past, the picture sets out early the fact that darker side of life remains perennially popular in terms of entertainment. It does this in a cinematic presentation of words, using lighting and the close-up to firmly draw the audience’s attention to the way crime and death is in alliance with the written media. It is a fascinating awareness of how to make its content acceptable and a clear and early attempt at setting the audience’s mindset to one of detached observer rather than morally bound viewer. It is significant that in a picture that features so few close-ups, there are two in the first six minutes. In presenting these two close-up shots in the early stages, Kind Hearts establishes a detached perspective founded on the traditionally distanced way the public experiences murder in the media.
This visual reminder is repeated at points throughout Louis’ story as the close-up of written media becomes a leit-motif. Indeed, perhaps the most ingenious use of this image to convey death comes as Louis starts crossing off his victims from the family tree. Three family members, including two newly born children, are eliminated from the equation with one stroke of Louis’ pen, ensuring a potentially gruesome moment becomes a memorably comic one. The scene is immediately preceded by a trip to the library to read the daily newspaper, with Louis intoning on the voiceover that ‘sometimes the deaths column brought good news, sometimes the births brought bad”, in a further appeal to an audience raised on reported events. The editing of the two sequences together serves to reinforce the deaths as occurring on paper and not in graphic terms. We again see how death in writing lessens the impact significantly, making it more accessible and manageable to the viewer.
We have seen how Kind Hearts uses the camera to present words as both a visual cue to invoke an audience response and perspective while also serving to detach the viewer from the sheer number of deaths that Louis is instigating. The way the film depicts those deaths that do not take place in writing reinforces the conclusion that the distancing effect at work here is to distract from the horror of murder rather than make the actual murders funny. As is employed in the film as a whole, there are a number of distancing strategies used in the depiction of murder. The first example is the deaths that take place off screen, as occurs in the cases mentioned above and the expiry of Lord D’Ascoyne, who suffers a stroke upon hearing of Ethelred’s execution. Secondly, there is the murder accompanied by droll commentary from Louis as occurs in the film’s most famous line that underscores the death of Lady Agatha: ‘I shot an arrow in the air. She fell to earth in Berkeley Square’. It is also worth noting that many of the characters are killed while pursuing leisure activities, ranging from photography (Henry) to heavy drinking (The Reverend), as if emphasising that they did not suffer. As all of the D’Ascoynes are played by the same actor it is also difficult to regard them as real deaths instead of simply the expiry of another caricature. The formalised aspect of the narrative establishes the line up of victims and simply leaves the viewer wondering how Louis is going to carry out the next one.
It is clear from all the above that the visual plane and the use of the camera are both used to great effect in order to distance the viewer from mass murder. The comedy is not all in the visuals though and the role of the inescapable subjective voiceover in producing humour should not be discounted. The omnipresence of Louis’ voiceover can be seen in some quarters as a foregrounding of the film’s mechanics and thus a distancing device in those terms, but instead I would argue that the effect is one of seeking a narrative investment in Louis. The employment of strategies of detachment does invoke issues around the rather complex process of audience identity and association with the characters and events on screen. The use of Louis’ continuous voiceover instigates a subjective point of view that is used to involve the audience and propel the narrative through what is of course potentially provocative material.
Essentially, the point I am trying to make is that the camera does not simply observe the action with a detached air; it combines with the voiceover on the soundtrack to create a narrative investment in Louis and an alignment with his mindset. The voiceover is used as a form of address to the audience, establishing a relationship and association with the detachment coming from Louis’ attitude towards life and disregard for conventional moral values. Louis’ voice is employed as a tool of control throughout the film, his subjective viewpoint serves to distance the viewer from his or her preconceptions and be drawn into his personal outlook, no matter how outrageous that may be. This use of the soundtrack is matched by the camerawork that often assumes the viewpoint of Louis in key scenes, particularly those that feature his victims.
An example of this can be found in the funeral scene that takes place immediately after the death of young Henry D’Ascoyne. The scene is memorable as the only one in which all members of the family are filmed together in a trick shot that includes the majority of Alec Guinness’ roles. The scene is constructed in the way it is for practical reasons, but it still provides a superb example of the way Mazzini perceives his soon to be victims and consequently what the audience is encouraged to feel also. Michael Newton mentions the scene in his BFI guide to the film when he says:
“The multiplying of Guinness into all the D’Ascoynes subtly diminishes the possibility of pity or outrage around the murders; Louis’s enemy is not a person, but a family, and there are just so many of them.” (Newton 2003, 59).
Subtle though the scene may be, it remains indicative of the way in which Louis’ effective monopoly over the representation of these people succeeds in detaching the viewer from any sympathy towards them. Newton highlights the sheer number of family members as being intimidating but it’s not just this; it is also the fact that they are all so dislikeable when seen from Louis’ perspective. The impact of this is heightened by the use of editing as the characters are captured one by one as Louis might pick off his victims. Louis remarks that this is the first time that he has seen the D’Ascoynes ‘en masse’ and it is the same for the viewer in terms of the film proper, having had a glimpse of all eight family members in the credit sequence. Their presentation in that title card is a style that is mirrored in this scene, the mise-en-scène replicating the ornate border to the credits in the architecture of the church as shown in Fig 3 and Fig 4 below:
Again the presence of Louis’ voice on the soundtrack is important in establishing a rapport with the viewer and consequently a shared perspective on the scene. The Reverend, who is himself a D’Ascoyne, is also speaking, but his sermon is muted as Louis’ voice intrudes silencing the vicar despite his lips still visibly moving. The viewer is privy to a funeral at which they know the murderer is present and yet we are still content to listen to the criminal rather than one of the mourners. We are then not a detached observer from the whole event but an observer detached from the expected and traditional position of empathy. This position is underlined by the scene that directly follows the funeral, as Ethelred proceeds to offer a condemnation of much of his family and even unknowingly slights Louis’ late mother, a statement that serves to further decrease the sentiment towards him and his fellow D’Ascoynes. Instead of sympathy towards a family dealing with loss, the funeral departure scene merely serves to underline the family politics and faux grandeur that dominate the D’Ascoyne mentality. The two shots illustrated above neatly mirror the perennial concern with rather grotesque opulence in the form of the coat of arms that overshadows the church.
Introducing the many faces of the D’Ascoyne clan as played by Alec Guinness at a funeral is a masterstroke by Hamer. It is a moment which captures all the family in a place of death and firmly reasserts the viewer’s standpoint towards them. The sentiment is characteristic of the way Kind Hearts is constructed around confounding traditional moral values. The scene is presented through the eyes of Louis, who is of course the very reason for there being a funeral. The camera and the use of viewpoint are used to further the rather unique form of distance this sequence invokes.
The camera provides us with Louis’ view of the ceremony, as it cuts from an initial establishing shot of the church to a medium close-up of him amongst the congregation before a succession of individual medium close-up shots of each family member. The camera does not pan but instead cuts individually to each, again a formal choice that was born from technical necessity but one that works perfectly to convey how the distance is constructed. As the cuts are made, Louis’ voice names each one. The characters remain silent but do make minor motions; Ethelred looks uncomfortably at the sobbing Edith, Henry’s wife (Valerie Hobson), Lord D’Ascoyne adjusts his glasses, the Admiral falls asleep only to be woken indignantly by Agatha. The name of each is preceded by the repeated phrase ‘there was’, an anodyne introduction that serves to objectify each as parts of a grotesque spectacle, a collective image that is reprised from the opening credit sequence.
Through establishing a detached perspective and portraying the D’Ascoynes and the aristocracy in such a way, the film attempts to attract and maintain audience empathy with Louis’ point of view. Kind Hearts manages to keep Mazzini in a detached relationship to all around him, an effect that serves to enhance the distancing present in other strategies throughout the film. One can witness this for example in the curiously disengaged treatment of his two love interests. Louis’ sexual encounters with childhood sweetheart Sibella (Joan Greenwood) take place off screen and the budding romance with Edith is less interesting in comparison. The viewer is indifferent as to whom Louis ends up with at the end, a fact acknowledged by the film as it concludes before Louis has made up his mind. The effect of Louis not connecting emotionally with those around him reasserts him as a guide for the audience, a presence that refuses to allow an emotional attachment to anybody else.
So, the above analysis of Louis and his presence within the film establishes the action as taking place in Louis’ world. In this final section, I would like to examine exactly how that world is formally created. One notion I would like to investigate is the theory that the viewer of Kind Hearts is always aware that it is a comedy and thus can suspend their regular sense of disgust. This idea ties in with an oft made criticism that the director’s use of theatricality is to the detriment of its cinematic qualities. Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik’s book Popular Film and Television Comedy provides a useful theoretical framework here with their work on comic verisimilitude. The term verisimilitude in cinematic terms refers to the appearance of truth and what is on screen having the quality of seeming to be true. Neale and Krutnik make a case for film comedies being governed by their own rules that basically make the unexpected acceptable, ensuring that the picture can still function in the traditional way despite the nature of what is depicted. They write:
“But of course, comedy and the comic have their own – generic – regimes of verisimilitude, their own – generic – decorum, their own – generic – norms, conventions, and rules…It accounts for the fact that while comic indecorum can on occasion disturb and offend, it usually does not – precisely because we expect indecorum of a comedy.” (Neale & Krutnik 1990 91-2).
While it is not regarded as a distancing device in this context, comic verisimilitude can be seen as a use of detachment to create comedy, as a self contained comic world is built to sustain the events contained within it. In order for a sense of comic verisimilitude to be recognised, it is necessary to establish as early as possible that the world of the film will be governed by the laws of comedy. One could argue that Hamer does this from any of the early sections; both the opening credits sequence with the shots of Guinness and the scenes involving the eccentric executioner have their funny moments, but neither fully warrants the opening of a comic sphere. Indeed, Hamer seems to share the problems of his protagonist in knowing where to start but I want to focus my analysis on the moment Louis’ recollection on his life begins.
It is at this moment that we enter Louis’ world and correspondingly the instant where standard moral values are tossed aside, a status marked by a macabre sight gag, the first to include death in the whole film. The opening of Louis’ narrative is preceded by a close up of the back of his head, a shot that provides a visual cue as to where the following story is coming from. It is a rather odd image, as the head leans into the frame from a bowed position and fills the frame. As the camera holds the shot the soundtrack falls silent, removing the outside world from interference into the world within the prison cell. The shot can be seen below in Fig 5 and Fig 6:
It is interesting to note the switch from the first shot (Fig 1) to the later frames, the change from an obvious point of view shot as the executioner looks through the spy hole to a more ambiguous image that the source of which cannot be firmly placed. This brief sequence serves a double purpose symbolically, conveying firstly the fact that the narrative we are about to see comes from a mind quite unconcerned to the societal law and norms outside his cell. We are also denied an initial view of Louis’ face, allowing the viewer the fantasy of the everyman, that anyone can get one over the hierarchy, if only for a short period. These are of course retrospective points, as the naïve viewer would know precious little of what is to follow but this brief analysis does provide a useful context for a point to be developed next.
I want to refer back to the sight gag I mentioned in passing above, the term ‘sight gag’ applying to a moment in a piece of filmed comedy that is comic on visual terms alone without need for audio accompaniment. The moment of concern here occurs as the newly born Louis is presented to his father by the maid. Mr. Mazzini Sr. promptly keels over and dies, the action followed soon after by his son’s explanatory comment, “... [He] succumbed to a heart attack at the moment of first setting eyes on me”. The death is undercut significantly by this deadpan remark and accompanies a theatrical collapse which is in itself rather ridiculous.
Hamer then cuts back to a medium shot of Louis in his cell momentarily, as if to herald a mournful and regretful reminiscence. Any possibility of this is soon ended in the next shot, as Louis Sr. is resurrected through the reported stories of Mrs. Mazzini told to her young son. The late father performs a lengthy and indeed rather painful song that is greeted with discomfort and boredom from his audience. Even his wife sits and squirms in her seat, presenting a very different response than one might expect. The use of reaction shots and the pacing of the sequence create a detachment from the death of an evidently proud man, instead highlighting his rather ridiculous persona.
This is an early indication of the way death will be treated throughout Kind Hearts. The first barrier has been crossed here, proving that death can be made funny and that detachment will be used in various ways to present this. We have little narrative investment in the character when he dies as he only actually speaks after his death has occurred on screen. In a neat twist that foreshadows the use of Guinness in multi roles, Price plays the senior Mazzini, again behind the trusted disguise of exaggerated facial hair. What does come next does little to sadden the viewer and thus the comic verisimilitude is established and corroborated to Louis’ role as storyteller. The viewer is able to take it as a given from this moment on that Kind Hearts is a comedy and is able to accept the rather unorthodox events that follow.
It is not just the depiction of comic events and over exaggerated behaviour that distinguishes a particular sense of unreality of course. The above sequences provide an early prompt towards the comic, whereas the remainder of the film is constructed using elements of mise-en-scène to portray a stylised sphere governed by different rules of verisimilitude. The way this world is linked to Louis is revealed if one compares the way the main narrative is shot in contrast to the scenes that bookend the central story. From the moment the camera leaves the prison cells the screen is bathed in light, an image made all the more striking after the gloom of the jail. Hamer fills the screen with beautiful English landscapes that are never threatened by cloud or rain. His transitional shots from the city to the countryside are almost fantastical as the camera cuts from a framed painting of Chalfont Castle to a shot of the real thing seamlessly. The holiday resort to which Louis departs in pursuit of his first victim is captured in much the same idealistic manner, as the sunshine glitters in the water and those attending are all immaculately dressed.
This formal construction is swiftly forgotten when Louis is finally captured, as only those shots that had been previously filmed in drab darkness are mirrored, including a matched shot of Louis being driven in a carriage, this time imprisoned. It is as if all imagination and exhilaration have been drained from the film, and this state is expressed in the establishing shots. There are no more dissolves from image to reality as instead Hamer uses a stock shot of the House of Lords in a much maligned moment. One almost feels that the director included it deliberately to show that the fun has stopped now the criminal has been caught. It is significant that the city takes on a foreboding and forbidding atmosphere with light struggling to break through the gloom that stifles the sense of adventure that so pervaded the country air.
The world of Louis Mazzini does not obey the laws of the land and so its depiction does not have to follow standard rules of representation. The use of a sense of comic verisimilitude allows the director to unleash his creativity and stylistic qualities while also neatly aligning humour with murder. By portraying an England that is so desirable, so steeped in nostalgia, as belonging to Louis Mazzini, Hamer shows admirable awareness of the power of the cinematic apparatus. The use of mise-en-scène is one final method of enticing the audience, presenting the world as an enjoyable place, even when mass murder is taking place.
This investigation began with a statement that declared Kind Hearts and Coronets to be an ‘enigmatic’ and ‘irreducible’ film. Those two terms are definitely still intact now that I have concluded my investigation but I feel that I have scratched that ‘surface’ enough to reveal a little of what lies beneath. Despite what some may say, the movie celebrates its cinematic qualities in its very being, as the strategies of detachment that ensure its success make great use of the cinema apparatus. The allure of the criminal Louis Mazzini is conveyed through a unique juxtaposition of sound and image as his character Louis’ voiceover, which is a distancing technique in itself, frees the film’s director from expository constraints and consequently Robert Hamer can display his eye for mise-en-scène and constructing a comic world. Finally and perhaps most importantly, Kind Hearts is well aware of its audience’s love for the darker things in life and manipulates this beautifully, ensuring that the delights it has to offer remain untainted by age.
References
Barr, C. 1993. Ealing Studios (2 nd edition). London: Studio Vista.
Hamer, R. 1984. Kind Hearts and Coronets (revised edition). London: Lorrimer Publishing.
Neale S. & Krutnik, F. 1990. Popular Film and Television Comedy. London: Routledge.
Newton , M. 2003. Kind Hearts and Coronets. London: British Film Institute.
Orwell, G. 1965. Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays. London: Penguin.
Stanbrook, A. 1964. Kind Hearts and Coronets in Hamer, R. 1984.
Styan, J. L. 1968. The Dark Comedy: The Development of Modern Comic Tragedy (2 nd edition). London: Cambridge University Press.
Filmography
Arsenic and Old Lace . Dir. Frank Capra, Prod. Warner Bros., USA, 1944. Main Cast: Cary Grant (Mortimer Brewster), Raymond Massey (Jonathan Brewster), Priscilla Lane (Elaine Harper).
Kind Hearts and Coronets . Dir. Robert Hamer, Prod. Ealing, GB, 1949. Main Cast: Dennis Price (Louis Mazzini / his father), Alec Guinness (Ascoyne d’Ascoyne / Henry d’Ascoyne / Canon d’Ascoyne / Admiral d’Ascoyne / General d’Ascoyne / Lady Agatha d’Ascoyne / Lord d’Ascoyne / Ethelred d’Ascoyne, Duke of Chalfont), Joan Greenwood (Sibella Holland).
Trainspotting . Dir. Danny Boyle, Prod. Channel Four, GB, 1996. Main Cast: Ewan McGregor ( Renton), Robert Carlyle (Begbie), Ewen Bremner (Spud).
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