Jan 19 movie: The Lavender Hill Mob. It was Alec Guinness night on TCM, and I recorded a couple of his Ealing movies that I hadn't seen before. This was a very funny story about a meek, unambitious treasury worker whose bosses refuse to promote him because he "lacks ambition," while he secretly plots a caper to steal £1,000,000 worth of gold, melt it down and smuggle it out of the country as phony Eiffel Tower souvenirs.
Like all the Ealing movies The Lavender Hill Mob is dryly hilarious, both when the caper is going off without a hitch, and when it inevitably spins out of control. I think my favorite scene is when Guinness and his partner (the souvenir exporter) advertise for assistants by shouting at each other on a bus about an unlocked safe, then waiting at the site and hiring on the spot the crooks who show up to rob them.
I'm always amazed at how Guinness can transform himself just by changing his demeanor. He's famous for it in Kind Hearts and Coronets, but he does it here too. The meek treasury employee seems like a totally different person from the mastermind gold thief.
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