All language subtitles for Classic.Movies.The.Story.Of.S01E02.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

(TRAIN WHISTLES, CHUGS)

(SWEET MUSIC)

MAN: Good morning.
Good morning.

Good morning, ma'am.
Good morning.

Good morning, Mrs Wilberforce.
Good morning, Mr Brown.

Good morning, madam.
Good morning.

Much has altered over the years,

but this labyrinth of streets
around the Kings Cross area

is the setting for one
of the greatest comedies ever made.

A heist movie, a murder story,

a fairy tale steeped in London soot.

A parable of Britishness,
and a comedy of manners

in which a gang of thieves
TRIES to kill a little old lady.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

What would you say made

The Ladykillers
such a timeless comedy?

Because it was so different
in turn to any other British film

I've ever seen, I think.

It was a comedy,
but it had a dark side to it.

And the amazing thing is

there's so many different
interpretations of it.

Mackendrick said once

that if it had not been a comedy,

if he'd made it straight,

it would've been censored
out of all existence.

He could never have made it.

So it was a comedy,
but it was a dark comedy.

(OMINOUS MUSIC)

IAN: The Ladykillers remains one of
the greatest British movies ever made

because it has not lost its sting.

The digs that
Rose-Mackendrick made in the '50s

are still relevant today.

The dark surrealism of the film
can be found in Monty Python.

The social satire is nearly
every British sitcom since.

Of course, comedy,
good comedy, is a serious business.

('MINUETTO' BY BOCCHERINI PLAYS)

How about that.

Eh?

How about that.

(SWEET MUSIC)

NARRATOR:
London is a city of secret places

of unexpected country lanes
and hidden gardens.

The Prime Minister
lives like a professional man

in a plain house on the side
of a narrow cul-de-sac.

(OMINOUS MUSIC)

(BIRDS SQUAWKING)

All right. All right.

(SQUAWKS)
All right, my dear.

I haven't been gone
so very long, have I?

Oh darling, water. Oh.

(MUSIC INTENSIFIES) (LOUD SQUAWKING)

(NOSTALGIC MUSIC)

(MUSIC BECOMES OMINOUS)

It was here on Argyle Street,

where Alec Guinness's grotesque
Professor Marcus takes a room,

the perfect location
from which to spring

the perfect plan
to rob the mail train.

In that famous shot
in which we first meet him

at the front door, we see
St Pancras station framed behind him.

(TENSE MUSIC)

Mrs Wilberforce?
Yes.

I understand you have rooms to let.

Oh, the rooms? Yes. Won't
you come in, please?Thank you.

As the '50s arrived,

a victorious
but exhausted post-war Britain

was getting back on its feet,
asking itself, what comes next?

Cinema was still
a national preoccupation.

Amid austerity and rationing,

the British public were hungry

for films that reflected
the changing times

and they were desperate for laughter.

(BELLS CHIMING)PRESENTER:
Already Piccadilly is very much
as it was before the war.

The British haven't yet forgotten

when the lights went out
for six long years.

(GONG CLANGS)

(AIR RAID SIRENS WAIL)

All was darkness then,

except for light slightly.

The illumination
of those years destroyed

more than the historic buildings
and human lives.

Accumulated wealth was spent

and the foreign investments of
centuries sold to purchase victory.

When victory came at last,
Britain was flat.

(MELANCHOLY MUSIC)

In Britain in the 1950s,

the country was getting over

the worst aspects of the war.

So, rationing had started to end.

You were starting
to see modernisation creep in.

Interestingly,
this film, The Ladykillers,

is shot in the steam age,
but in 1955, when it was released,

diesel trains began
to replace steam trains.

So we're on the very verge
of modernisation,

moving into the 20th century
as a country.

The social makeup of London
in the 1950s

was fairly tumultuous.

The people were coming out
of the shadow of war.

They were also trying to cope
with continuing austerity,

and there were
a tremendous amount of problems,

social problems on the streets.

And yet, there was a sense that

we had won the war
and were unravelling in the peace.

Now, London
had been bombed to pieces.

There were gaping holes
in the buildings,

in the infrastructure, in the roads

and it was being rebuilt
but piecemeal,

a little bit at a time.
The country was broke,

it was borrowing money to get by

and so everything that was happening
was happening where it could.

There's constant bomb sites which
people were taking advantage of.

There was all sorts
of dodgy business was possible,

because there was so much money
changing hands in odd ways.

There were still the remnants
of the black market.

There were still gangsters
operating in Soho.

It was a very mixed up,
messed up time,

but that was also a time
of enormous potential.

A time when someone with a good idea

or an imaginative approach

or, as this film shows,

a cunning semi-legal,
if not entirely illegal enterprise,

could probably slip through the gaps
in society and make their way.

(INTRIGUING MUSIC)

Picture the scene:
Kings Cross in 1955.

The scars of the war
are still evident,

but the times are changing.

Advertising hoardings, motor cars,

a sense of possibility hangs
in the polluted air.

London is bustling into the future

by fair means or otherwise.

So Ealing Studios' properly,
the way that we see it,

sort of golden age
in the 1940s and 1950s,

really happens after Michael Balcon

who was an early mogul,
who helped Hitchcock

get some of his films off the ground
in the 1930s, came along.

And Ealing Studios, as we know it,

happened just around the beginning
of the Second World War.

And throughout the second World War,
Balcon was very interested

in the idea that film should have
some social responsibility,

and he was interested in expanding
what kind of things could be done.

And so he started to make films

that were concerned
with war propaganda,

things like
Went the Day Well in 1943.

And by the late 1940s,
had sort of perfected

a very British, very sort of genteel

style and approach, and also
a really nice way of working,

which included contracting
most of its players out.

So by 1949, he had Alec Guinness,

he had the people that you associate
with the Ealing comedy.

The films are an inspired reflection

of a jaunty, disrespectful side
to the British character.

The plucky island
that has stood up to Hitler,

a spirited non-conformism
that had hibernated

during the pomp of the empire
and Victorian times,

but had been reawakened by the war.

Indeed, it is often the tension

between these two sides
of Britishness,

tradition and subversion,

that stirs up the comedy.

And never more so
than in The Ladykillers.

NORMAN: Ealing comedies
were a reflection

of the national character
at the time.

They caught the zeitgeist

of how people were feeling.

They caught the idea that,

having seen off the Nazis at a cost,

that they had a sense of...it had
built up that sense of resistance.

That idea that you could be

sort of tribal in a way.

It brought out the idea of course,
that Britain was an island nation

and that they would resist
all invaders.

It left the nation
with a somehow a sort of residual

sense of resistance,
which was transferred

to institutions and authorities

that they didn't care for. They
didn't want to be put down anymore.

They wanted to actually
have more freedom.

And so Michael Balcon,

who understood the British
character very, very well,

he brought together a whole gang

of like-minded directors
and writers,

and indeed editors.

The Ladykillers is the last
of the Ealing comedies,

a collection of comedies
that had nailed this period

because the studios had worked

with a variety of different
directors during the war.

They'd learned a documentary style.
They wanted realism.

They wanted to look at the streets,
the stories around them

and appeal actually
to a largely working-class,

cinema-going audience.
So, it was very aware

of these changes
and The Ladykillers was the final...

if you like... Because the studio
was closed pretty much after this.

It was sold to the BBC
and the concept of the Ealing comedy

ended with The Ladykillers.
This was their final hurrah.

May I introduce Mr Lawson?

How do you do gentlemen?
Mr Lawson?

And Mr Robinson.
Mrs Wilberforce.

Mr Robinson.

All right. Thank you.

You believe it all.

That's the amazing thing
about the film.

It is a kind of a fantasy, isn't it?

It's got a sort of fable-like
structure to it, hasn't it?Yes. Mm.

It does have, but you keep
on watching and you believe it all.

That's the extraord... And I think
that's one of the reasons

you believe it all, is the old girl.

Yes, Katie Johnson. Yes.
Katie Johnson.

She's, you know,
a fairly unknown figure,

but she's so good in the film.

She keeps it on a steady, I mean,

she doesn't try
to be funny in any way.

Yes.
She is...completely...herself.

It's that marvellous quality
of great comedy.Yeah.

None of the actors or characters
know they're in a comedy,

for them the world is dead straight.
Yeah. Exactly, yes.

And she certainly is. She's a...

She really bases the whole thing

in reality I think,
more than anything else.

(METALLIC CLANGING)
(PIPES SHUDDERING, BANGING)

(WATER GURGLING AND HISSING)

(CHUGGING)

WOMAN: (OVER PA)
The train now arriving

at Platform 1...
(TRAIN WHISTLING)

..is the 1:05pm from Cambridge.

(SUSPICIOUS MUSIC)

This is King's Cross Station,
one of the main hubs of London

in the 1950s and it was in this area

The Ladykillers took place.

# BOCCHERINI: Minuetto #

Now she's driving away.

Under the artful eye of director
Alexander Mackendrick,

the most cunning
of the Ealing directors,

in The Ladykillers,
Kings Cross is not just a backdrop,

it is a character.

This is the perfect microcosm
of London in 1955.

The oblivious traffic streaming by

that serves as both
an opportunity

for the professor's gang of rogues
and a trap.

They will never escape its grip.

In fact, they will only ever be free

of Mrs Wilberforce's
strange little house

via, how should we put it?
The back door.

The plot of The Ladykillers
is relatively simple.

It's a caper movie to begin with.

It's about a gang of criminals

who have plans to rob a security van

on King's Cross Station.

The element
that is unusual about this

is that they want to use
a little old lady

who lives right on the edge

of the Copenhagen Bridge,

which is part of one of the tunnels

leading into Kings Cross.

And they're going
to actually use her

to get the loot
away from the station

and to safety, because
that is where the danger lies

in the aftermath.

We have to have someone to bring out
the money. Let's get a professional

or bring it out ourselves.
A spectacular getaway, you mean?

That's 70 miles an hour in the heart
of London, in broad daylight.

(CHUCKLES)
(LAUGHS)

I'll take it back into the station-
And send it out by train?

What any intelligent policeman
would expect us to do.

Quite a flair for the obvious.

Can't you appreciate
that Mrs Wilberforce

is not a mere appendage to my plan.
She's the very core of it.

So, we have Mrs Wilberforce,

who is a very old lady,

slightly fussy,
slightly bewildered.

She's well-known
at the local police station

for constantly going in
and reporting crimes

which aren't crimes.

She has a room in her house
that she wants to let out,

and this mysterious
Professor Marcus appears

and rents out the house.
This is Alec Guinness's character.

Very rapidly, it becomes clear

that he's putting together
a gang to do a job.

They want to-to pull over a van

and steal what's in it,
but for this, they need a patsy.

So he tells her that they're going
to have a string quintet

practicing upstairs
during the evenings in her house.

And does she mind?
She doesn't mind. She loves music.

Once they've got the goods,
once they've got the money,

they need to get it past the police.

And the way
they've decided to do this

is to tell the old lady
to go to the station

and pick up a case which she's
got to bring back to the house.

That's the genius,

as the Professor Marcus insists,

that's what's perfect
about his perfect plan

is that the police will be looking
for money going out,

but what they're going to do
is bring the money in.

There is this wonderful quality
in The Ladykillers

that it takes real life

and sort of re-serves it up
in dark comic terms.

So, the gang
are essentially a-a model

of the real life gangs
of Kings Cross.

The Italian gangs.
They are, yes. They're a model of...

what was going on, really.

After all,
what does Peter Sellers play?

He plays an archetypal spiv,
really, doesn't he?Yeah.

And uh...Herbert Lom is
the international one...

um...dead serious.

He's the most-
Yes. He's the assassin, isn't he?

Yes. He's the assassin.

So as a contrast to Mrs Wilberforce,

who has this kind of rosy,
quaint English-ness

and a real politeness,
but also has this sort of

iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove quality
about her,

this kind of
unbreakable sense of self

and how things should be
in the world.

Versus the men, the criminals,
that pile into the picture.

Each of them represents
a very specific part

of British society at that time.

So, you have the youngest
of the bunch,

you have Peter Sellers
who comes along,

and this is basically
your East End,

cheeky spiv character.

He even has the sort of draped,

flat lapel jacket
that the Teddy boys used to wear.

He represents sort of
the danger of youth,

of the youth rebellion, I guess,
of the period to some extent.

You have Herbert Lom

who was a Czech-born,
half-Jewish actor

who came to Britain
to get away from the Nazi invasion

of what was then Czechoslovakia.

And he had a side
in playing villains.

He was always playing villains.
He had both seemingly the demeanour

and I guess at the time
what people consider to be

the right accent for it.

And I think
he's the scariest of the bunch.

I think he very much represents
this idea of um...

of a foreign threat.

Making up the gang is

the huge thug played by Danny Green,
who is the muscle.

If-If-If you'd imagined
a potato talking,

it would talk in the voice
of Danny Green.

You have the major Cecil Parker,

wonderful sort of faux gentleman,

bit of a coward,
probably cashiered from the army

if indeed he ever was in the army,

but a sort of prime
cowardly con-man type.

This is a wonderful collection,

but it's headed by Guinness.

He gives
an extraordinary performance.

Guinness's performance
as the professor

is a comic marvel of straight acting.

When he first read the screenplay,

he was sure that it had been written
for Alastair Sim.

He was assured by all around him

that, "No, no, no, it's for you,
Alec. It's your story".

Nevertheless,
what Guinness decided to do

was play the role as Alastair Sim.

So, that extraordinary look,
the hairpiece, the teeth,

the dark eyes, the pale skin,

is in a way based on Alastair Sim,

especially his version
of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Alec Guinness served during
the Second World War in the Navy.

He was a landing craft commander
during the invasion of Sicily.

He would also go back to the UK
now and again to appear

in patriotic plays. So he was
in a play about bomber command

and the odd film
where he played a soldier.

He had prior to the war been

in a number of theatrical
productions, including one

he'd devised himself, which is
an adaptation of Great Expectations.

And just after the war,
David Lean took the idea

of that adaptation and then
further adapted it with Ronald Neame

into the film Great Expectations,
in which he cast Alec Guinness,

which is his first big film role.

Then, his first big breakthrough

popular appeal movie was

Kind Hearts and Coronets,
which was an Ealing Comedy's comedy,

and it was the beginning
of his career with Ealing.

In Kind Hearts and Coronets,
he plays all the members

of the D'Ascoyne family,
who are murdered one at a time.

So, he plays a variety
of very cartoon-like characters,

which is interesting when you think
of his career.

He'd been playing
Shakespearean roles largely,

almost entirely
up until the Second World War,

then, coming out of it,
he plays some serious roles.

He's got some romantic comedies
under his belt to come.

He was going to be a romantic lead,

but he was quite prepared
to take these very, very

over-the-top, cartoonish roles.

What's wrong? Major! Major!
Tell me what's happening!

Louis! Louis!Major!Will you
mind your own business, please?

So, with Alec Guinness,

sort of rightly placed,
both as an actor

and in every other sense,
as the ringleader of this group,

it is a wonderful ensemble piece
of a film in terms of these actors.

But it's really interesting
to see someone who would become

as huge as Peter Sellers
in sort of a second-fiddle part.

Of course, at the time,
Sellers was more than happy to just

be on a film set
with Alec Guinness.

He regarded him as one of his idols.

He said he was happy
just to watch Alec Guinness act.

Guinness in return
once recalled that he felt

that Peter Sellers
was rather sulky or quiet on set.

Maybe because he was intimidated,
although that's just me inferring.

But Guinness is,
I think rightly deserving

of that level of adulation
from Sellers

and from I think the rest of us.

Because the ability
with which he could switch

between, you know, Shakespeare

and comedy, something like
Kind Hearts and Coronets

to Bridge on the River Kwai,
which was only a few years later

in 1957, is...is really remarkable.

Guinness never overdoes things.

His performance is brim full of
subtle ironies and physical comedy.

He's the devil
in a threadbare jumper.

There is something Mephistophelian
about his performance.

It is less the ill-gotten gains
at stake than his own cleverness.

He unravels
as the plot unravels around him.

Arrogance is his downfall

and he cannot understand
why this little woman

has destroyed his master plan.

(WHISTLE BLOWS)

(CHUCKLES) I'm always leaving it.

(PROFESSOR LAUGHING)
LOUIS: What's she doing? What?

MAN: What's going on here?
It's all right.

It's just that she went
back to get her umbrella.

# BOCCHERINI: Minuetto #

LOUIS:
She could have shopped us all.

The silly old-
Uh...what you're knocking her for?

She done it, didn't she?
We're nearly home, Louis.

What can possibly go wrong now?

(KNOCKING) Driver! Stop at once!
Hey, what?

Born in Boston
of Scottish heritage

and raised in Glasgow,

Alexander Mackendrick
was a gifted artist.

He had been a political cartoonist

and drawn propaganda pieces
during the war,

and then moved into documentaries.

The head of Ealing Studios,
Michael Balcon,

had reluctantly accepted him
as Director of Whiskey Galore.

And Mackendrick would wrap
his stylish comedies

in barbed wire and through films
like The Man In The White Suit

and The Lady Killers
come to be seen

as the greatest exponent
of the Ealing comedy.

He was very politically minded.
A lot of his cartoons

are quite satirical and quite edgy.

During the Second World War,
he worked in the film industry

and was part of a group of people
who helped to restructure

the Italian film industry.
So, when he came back to the UK,

he, instead of going back
into advertising and cartoons,

he went into working
for Ealing Studios,

where, initially,
he worked as a sketch artist

and gradually took
little assistant directing jobs

until his first directing job
for the studios

was Whiskey Galore about Scots
thumbing their noses at the English.

And he worked his way up
through The Man in the White Suit,

which was seen by Ealing
as excessively satirical

and this, The Ladykillers, was his,

I would argue his finest work.
It was his farewell to the UK.

He left after this
to go to America

and it really is
the apogee of his career.

It's a phenomenal piece of work.

It's interesting
that Alexander Mackendrick ended up

on The Ladykillers
because Michael Balcon

did not originally want him for it.

He'd made a film in 1951
for Ealing Studios

called The Man in the White Suit,
which was, I think,

quite politically subversive
and spiky for its time.

And perhaps slightly
outside of the remit

of what Ealing usually did,
which tended to fall back on

slightly more cosy truisms about
British authority, particularly.

Mackendrick was known
for having a little bit more of a,

perhaps more quietly,
but still a subversive attitude.

He had also a little bit
of a different background

to perhaps
some of the other Ealing directors.

He came from Boston originally,

by the time he was seven,
he had both lost his father

and his mother had left him behind.

So, his grandfather took him
to Scotland where he was raised.

And perhaps
partly as a result of that,

he had something
of a lonely childhood.

By the time he was making movies,

you can see some of that cynicism
about humanity, I think,

and some darkness in that work.

And so even though
he was not originally slated

to end up on The Ladykillers,

he was already friendly with

and had worked with William Rose,
the screenwriter.

Ironically, but fittingly,

The Ladykillers is a creation
of two outsiders

who had made Britain their home,
and they brought a disdainful

and slightly distant examination
of the country to the film.

The screenwriter William Rose
had been born in Missouri,

but was stationed in London
during the war,

married a local woman and stayed on.

So, he could observe British manners
from close quarters.

He wrote five screenplays for Ealing,
among them Genevieve,

and claimed to have dreamed up
his masterpiece in its entirety.

Brilliantly structured,
piercingly clever

and scaberulously funny,

the screenplay for The Ladykillers
would be nominated for an Oscar.

(DUBIOUS ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)

I don't believe it.
I don't believe it.

Shut up.
It's just sitting there.

Look, could we-No-one, I hope, is
going to suggest that we steal it.

So, you're talking about two people,
to some extent or another

who had a slightly external view
of British-ness,

but also seemingly could take
a scalpel to it in certain ways.

And so when they met at this meeting

at Ealing Studios
that they had weekly

and Rose mentioned that the
entire concept of The Ladykillers

came to him in a dream,
Mackendrick was fascinated by that.

That was when he thought
he could really do something

with the material because
it was quite an unusual concept.

Well, Mackendrick
is a director who...

..really came from Scotland
and did things differently.

Him and Robert Hamer were the best,
I think, of that group of directors.

Yes.
But he was the most original,

and this is the most original
of all the films

that are so admired now.

Were they admired at the time?

I mean, they're revered now.
Yes, they were. I think they were.

But I think the Americans thought,

oh, the funny British
are at it again, you know,

but they did like this film,
didn't they?Yes.

I think it was um...

was well remarked upon,
and as I say,

Mackendrick was immediately
invited to Hollywood.

Rose and Mackendrick
had had slightly difficult dealings

with each other
on a previous film, The Maggie,

but at the weekly meetings
at Ealing,

when Rose pitched his new idea,
which he dreamed of,

Mackendrick took to it immediately.

He saw the possibilities
and so the two of them

really collaborated on this script.

Interestingly enough, Michael Balcon
was rather nervous of the script

and so was Rank,
the distribution company.

However, Mackendrick had his way.

He said, "I can make this film
with Rose's script",

which actually wasn't completed
at the time of filming.

And, that it won't be...
He assured Balcon

that it wouldn't be too satirical
or too political.

In fact, what it did give
Mackendrick was the opportunity

to actually put all these elements
in, in a much more coded form.

And I think that's one of
the reasons why The Ladykillers

is so endearing.

Because every time you see it,
you see yet another little layer.

You see another little element um...

that has been smuggled in
by Mackendrick.

Alexander Mackendrick has said
this is a film

about Britain in subsidence,
and I think it's significant

that Rose and Mackendrick
were both outsiders.

They were looking at the UK

in this slightly bewildered fashion.

For instance, William Rose had
previously written Genevieve,

this film about this car race
to Brighton.

There's a scene in that
where two people cannot understand

why in a boarding house they have
to pre-book their hot water

for 30 minutes. And after
they've complained... (CHUCKLES)

..one woman says,
"Are they Americans?"

And you can see
that's William Rose's voice.

That's the man,
the American in Britain.

You've got to book your hot water?!

And this film
is very much like that.

It's people
looking at Britain and going,

"This is how they do things?!

"This is how crimes are committed?
This is insane!"

But it's done
with enormous affection.

(SINGING INDISTINCTLY)
(DOOR OPENS)

(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC)

Ah, professor!

Good afternoon, gentlemen.
(LAUGHTER)

Your last rehearsal! Ah, professor,

I must give you back
your ten shillings.Thank you.

You see, the cab man wouldn't take
any money cause he said

he was going
into some other business.

In terms of style, Mackendrick
was recalling German expressionism,

particularly the work
of Fritz Lang and F W Murnau,

films such as M and Nosferatu.

You can see the Vampire
in Nosferatu in Professor Marcus

and Mackendrick makes wonderful use
of exaggerated silhouettes.

Tall, dark angles

and this division,
this sort of scale

between the little old lady
and these mobsters in her home.

So, Mackendrick
was extremely visually

and cinematically literate,
as you might expect,

and you can see with him that as
much as he has an ear for dialogue,

which he's well known for,
he also has a great eye here

in these interiors. Even though that
house looks very sort of cluttered

and overcrowded by people
and so forth,

he finds a way
to get those Dutch tilts in,

and he finds a way to kind of get
those angles at an odd skew.

And it only aids this feeling
of this kind of dream-like sense

of things not quite being right,

because whose perspective
are we looking at here or from here?

Even when the camera's kind of
floating around behind

the heads of characters, it's almost
like an omniscient viewpoint,

which suggests that there's
someone else in the room watching

all of this as though it's almost
like an out-of-body experience

to see it. And I think
that's really fascinating.

NORMAN: This is a film
that is shot on real locations,

but it has the exaggeration

and the distortions of

a kind of really grim fairy tale.

Not only that, but it moves
through different ways

and modes of comedy, of farce,

into something
that is close to film noir.

It goes into a caper film.

One of the impressive things
about this film is that

this actual robbery itself...

So meticulous
is that depiction of that robbery

that it was...
The film was banned for being shown

in prisons for many years

after a bunch of ex-convicts
performed a robbery

based almost entirely
on the robbery in this film.

Once you've got
the measure of this film,

once you've got the idea
that you are watching something

that is unreal,
but in a realistic environment,

then you've got it.
You can play with anything.

The interior
of Mrs Wilberforce's house

encompasses all of Mackendrick's
expressionist games.

It appears tilted,
a fairy-tale house

built around a bewilderment of rooms

and these inconstant pipes

that Mrs Wilberforce encourages
with a rubber mallet.

Mackendrick classified his film

as a parody of Britain in subsidence.

It was just on the edge, wasn't it?

Yeah.When you look at it now,
you think...

..is that working?

You know, but it does.
Somehow, it works.

These ridiculous crooks...
Yeah.

..who are really quite real,

as well as being ridiculous.

There's something fantastical
about this film, isn't there?

Yeah.When you see it again,
you think, gracious me,

I've never seen a film
quite like this.(CHUCKLES)

ALL: (SINGING)
# Shine upon my brow today

# Life is fading fast away #

(CHUGGING)

(OMINOUS MUSIC)

It was over there on Frederica Street

where the facade of the house
was specially built.

In the film, Frederica Street
overlooked the railway line

and the mouth of Copenhagen Tunnel.

This gave Mackendrick
his Dante-like images

of criminal bodies being dispatched

onto passing coal trains to descend,

we don't doubt, all the way to hell.

(RAILWAY TRACKS CLATTER)

(BOLD MUSIC)

ONE-ROUND: Guess who's next!

Of course comedy, good comedy,
is a serious business,

and there are many different ways
in which The Ladykillers

has been read over the years.

Is it some kind of psychological
study of the family unit,

where Mrs Wilberforce
becomes the mother figure

and the reason, the very reason,
the gang finally can't kill her?

Is it that there is
an honour amongst thieves,

there are certain levels
they will not stoop to?

She is their mother.
How could they possibly kill her?

Then it is read
as a political satire.

The between Mrs Wilberforce
is the unchanging,

unstinting,
conservative side of things,

whereas the gang
is huffing and puffing

to change things in the 1950s,

but they cannot change tradition.

NORMAN:
Mrs Wilberforce is the emblem

of a kind of older generation
of Britain,

the one who grew up
with Victorian values,

one who is sort of full

of moral rectitude.

And although on the surface

she appears to be one
of Ealing's kindly,

little benign, genteel,
little old ladies,

she's actually got
reserves of strength

and fortitude that emerge
during the course of the film.

NATHAN: What they're doing
is they're pinpointing a moment

in British history and they're
drawing in a variety of characters

and a variety of archetypes
and a variety of narratives,

and putting them
into this one mythical place

in order to illustrate a point.

And the point is the change
that Britain is about to go through

or is currently undergoing
and how it is irreversible,

but how Britain is trying to fight
back and trying to stop it.

And this is very much
what Mackendrick was clear on.

It's a satire, it's a social satire,
about the state of the nation.

He saw the lady that is not killed
despite the title,

Mrs Wilberforce,
as symbolic of Old Britain,

the Pre-War Britain,
the Victorian Britain

that was still clinging onto
its ideas and its principles.

And he saw the gang as modernity.

They represent these types
that were coming in, you know,

trying to get their purchase
into this tiny weenie street,

which is holding onto
all its values.

And he saw that as being
what the film was about.

So really, so much of the...

the cen... like, the linchpin,
I guess I would say

of The Ladykillers
is the performance

from Katie Johnson
as Mrs Wilberforce.

And Katie Johnson was an actress

who was sort of a jobbing,
supporting actress

for decades in British film.

So it's fair to say
that some British audiences may well

have recognised her face.

Which I think only heightens this
feeling that you get in the film

of here's an actress who's,
I believe, 76 years old

when the film was being made
or as the film came out

and is already a likable character.
She's a very sweet, little old lady,

but it gives you the sense that
audiences or contemporary audiences,

would've been on
this woman's side in some ways.

They'd been watching her
for a long time,

but she'd never had
her name by the title.

She'd never got
a proper credit on a film

or been in a real starring role,
even over all those years.

So, Alexander Mackendrick
actually spoke to Ealing

and spoke to Rank, the distributors,
and wanted to get her name

above the title,
which he succeeded in doing.

But then you could always
get that in British films.

When you look down the cast list,

you've seen a number of bit players,
who hardly...you hardly...

Frankie Howard is a barrow boy,
for goodness sake.Yes! (CHUCKLES)

Young man!
Do you mind?

That's the charm of the film

and the charm of lot of British
films at the time is the cast list.

Oh, good God, it's him and him,
and her and her.

And it's certainly true
of this film.

And it creates a texture,
doesn't it? Because...

they're all very different actors...
Yes, absolutely.

..and that kind of mixture
sort of gives it something.Yeah.

I think the real...it advertises

the fact
that British character actors

are probably
the best in the world.

I don't know
whether that's true or not,

but I think it is,
and this...this film

absolutely agrees with that theory.

Yeah.
But what it's about,

it's very difficult to ascertain.

What do you think it's about?

I think it's about,

on one level it's a morality tale.

Yes, it is. Yes.
It's about...

wrongdoers who get their comeuppance
delivered to them...Mm.

..by fate, by the little old lady.

I think as you said, it is
a portrait of a changing time.

I think we'd come out of the war
and the empire, the old order,

have been sort of pushed aside...
Mm.

..and this new order
hasn't found itself yet.

So the crooks kind of represent
that aspirational side.

It's definitely a comment
on its time.Yeah.

Definitely. But quite what
that comment's actually saying is,

well, you can have all sorts
of theories about it.Yeah.

The Ladykillers remains one of the
greatest British movies ever made.

What's more,
it is hugely influential.

It's had such an influence
on pop culture.

The dark surrealism of the film
can be found in Monty Python.

The social satire is nearly
every British sitcom since.

It's kind of fairy-tale London
can be felt in films as diverse

as The Long Good Friday, Performance,
and the Harry Potter films.

And the Coen Brothers
proved with their remake,

it was an unrepeatable film as well.

I think that The Ladykillers
is a masterpiece

for many, many reasons,
not least visually.

It's timing is so impeccable.

The comic timing,
the combination of the screenplay,

someone like even Peter Sellers
who was fairly green at the time,

just the way he can land
a simple quip,

it's...it's flawless.

And people will always laugh at it,

regardless of the fact
that it's really specifically

in 1950s Britain,
it doesn't really matter.

It-It travels. Like there's this
wonderful moment with Peter Sellers

that I always think of and it's not
one of the bigger comic moments,

I don't think, but to me,
it just shows the brilliance

of the combined efforts
of all the creative people

involved with the film.
Where you get

the old ladies piling in
for the tea party,

the initial idea is Herbert Lom's
like, oh, we'll throw her

in the car. Oh, we're gonna have
to take that one too.

The second woman comes in
and then they all start coming in,

and Peter Seller's looks
and he says, "What shall we do?

"Charter a bus?" And it cuts.

Doesn't let you have
any reaction time.

It cuts away immediately
and keeps moving the action.

(WOMEN CHATTER INDISTINCTLY)
What do you think we should do?

Charter a bus?
(CHATTER CONTINUES)

The Ladykillers is a superb film

because it can exist
in pure isolation

as a fable, as a fairytale,

and yet it is also if looked at,
a document of its time.

So, you can study this film
almost endlessly.

You can study this film
as a document about '50s Britain

and about a historical moment
in this country.

You can also use it to study film.

It's about a particular point
where Ealing Studios,

who represented a particular
kind of cinema, is ending.

And understanding,
the arrival of new forms.

It's also, at the same time,

something which you don't have to
worry about any of that whatsoever.

It's also just a daft story
about this little fairy-tale cottage

in a forest of London

where these monsters come
and try to scare an old lady

and then fail and she ends up
living happily ever after.

So, you can see any film you want to
in this and it will work.

That's what is so genius about it.

It can be every film
to every person.

(SOMBRE MUSIC)
(BUS CLATTERS)

But I do hope you'll believe me.

It's true. I get it, the lolly,
but I wasn't really one of the gang.

I admit the keeper
was planned in my house,

but it wasn't I who planned it.

And I did not plan
or have anything to do

with the East Castle Street job.
Didn't ya, ma'am?

The central character
of Mrs Wilberforce,

who is trying to give the money back
to the police

and partly because
she spent a lot of time

talking about things
that haven't happened,

they are very kind,
they're indulgent.

But they simply don't believe her.
They say, "Well...

"just keep the money.
She's done her best to actually

be as righteous as possible

and uh...as law abiding,

and that is her reward.

Her reward is to have all the money.

I think that's a fantastic,

fantastically subversive message.

Especially given the fact
that she is the one

who's actually...emblematic

of these old,
almost sort of past-it values

of implacability,
you know, the Victoriana.

And the great thing is that

it doesn't seem
to have affected her at all,

because now she is able
to be generous.

Now she's able to be benevolent
in a way that she was before,

but without the resources.
Now she has the resources.

Absolutely wonderful
and a strangely uplifting ending.

Oh, very good, very good.

Turned out nice, hasn't it.
Yes. It has.

Perhaps more than any other Ealing,

it's lasted because
you don't see it maybe nostalgically,

you see it as its own thing.

I see it nostalgically too

because of King's Cross
and everything.Yes. Yes.

But at the same time,

it's an astonishing film
because it...

it works on
so many different levels.Yeah.

Not sure what Mackendrick really
was trying to do with the film,

but whatever it was,
he made a very good film.

Oh, hey, hey, hey! Look!
Here, lady! Look!

(SWEET MUSIC)

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