STATE LIBRARY NSW - 16 June 2024 - The Ladykillers (1955)

restored classic with soundtrack, 90 minutes.

Tickets: $25/$20

General seating - not reserved or numbered

(T 0419 267 318)

A superb Ealing comedy with everything: exquisite dark humour, outstanding actors led by Alec Guinness and excellent direction by Alexander Mackendrick.

Five oddball criminals planning a bank robbery rent rooms from an octogenarian widow under the pretext that they are classical musicians. The hapless robbers never had a chance as the gran triumphs over Guinness and his gang, including the great Peter Sellers in an impressive early role. The film is an excellent example of the prestigious and beloved studio firing on all cylinders. Audiences and critics understood and acclaimed this masterpiece as they do today. One wrote, “…this ultimate fractured fairy tale where a first act robbery is directed with the cross-cutting suspense of a Hitchcock film, while the second act crumbles into multiple murders, is the height of farce. This suspiciously disruptive criminal horde proves no match for one defiant lady, with her innocence, moral fortitude and a parrot named General Gordon.”

This remarkable British satire of the genteel and the macabre came from the astonishing talents of two US born film figures, the director, Mackendrick, and the Oscar winning writer, William Rose. Sweet irony indeed.