This commentary contains some spoilers and may be better read after the screening.
This is, of course, a very personal opinion, but I think that The Lavender Hill Mob is the most perfect of all the post-war British comedies. It is not as savage as Kind Hearts and Coronets, nor as satirical as The Man in the White Suit, nor as morally playful as The Ladykillers. But I think it is the most perfectly joyful expression of a peculiarly post-war dream: the possibility of a new way of life in which adventure, wealth, and friendship should be available even to the country’s “non-entities.” The film’s structure is perfectly economical; the establishment, execution, and collapse of the mob’s plan to rob the Bank of England is exquisitely presented, with no waste or excess.
Well, almost no excess.
There is one narratively gratuitous sequence, and it just happens to be (at least in my opinion) the most sublime moment in the film.
The film’s two heroes – Holland (Alec Guinness) and Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway) – are at the top of the Eiffel Tower when they realise that their plan has begun to unravel. It is imperative that they catch up with a troupe of English schoolgirls who are making off with some of the men’s gold. Unable to take the lift, the men resort to running down the central staircase of the Eiffel Tower. What follows is the most impeccably directed slice of vertigo you’ll ever see. The camera – all unpredictable movement and canted angles – throws the rigid diagonals of the tower’s structure into confusion as they reel and spin and dissect the frame in outrageous geometries. A hat and a coat plunge into the abyss and are lost. And Holland and Pendlebury run on, desperate to catch the girls.
And then Pendlebury begins to laugh.
Holland, irritated, shouts back that “There’s nothing to laugh at,” before starting to laugh himself.
And their wild, impossible, speeded-up dash ends in a riot of inexplicable laughter.
It is this laughter which makes me love the film so much. Britain in the early 1950s had little to laugh at. Rationing and hardship were still widespread; the housing programme was impressive but many still lived in blitzed or slum housing; London and other cities were still punctuated by bombsites and the markers of the catastrophe of conflict. And yet, in these glorious comedies turned out by Ealing Studios, the nation laughed. And this wasn’t simple escapism; these were comedies of contemporary life, in which the scars of war could be clearly seen in the frame, and in which crime and precariousness were everywhere. But Britain, faced with all its challenges and setbacks, still laughed, in a moving acknowledgement of the absurdities of the modern world and of the possibilities of joy that remained.
An echo of their laughter remains in the very final scene, in which Holland, against all the logic of his situation, continues to smile. This enigmatic smile is the undoing of post-war attempts to plan and control the population into good behaviour. It is a naughty smile, and a resilient smile, and a defiant smile. And it is, in 2023, still a very funny smile. I hope that you find yourself laughing at nothing along with the wonderful, inspiring Lavender Hill mob.
The Lavender Hill Mob | 1951 | directed by Charles Crichton | starring Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway