THE LADYKILLERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 893, 14 September 1956, Page 16

THE LADYKILLERS

(Rank-Ealing) Y Cert. "TALKING about The Goon Show tecently with a BBC producer, I found myself agreeing that one could not | imagine its lunacy in visual terms. The Ladykillers goes a little way along the road. It’s true the film follows a logical, cause-and-effect pattern which anyone can understand, and I’m sure the people about me who found it so amusing were not all Goonatics, But there’s a rich, heartless, Goonlike absurdity about its situations and about several of its leading characters (one of them played, as it happens, by a leading Goon, Peter Sellers), and personally I think it can only teally be enjoyed if approached on some such terms. Unfortunately, perhaps, the cinema tends to bring it downto earth. The Ladykillers is the sort of film that can’t be adequately discussed without revealing the plot, so those who want to feel its full force had better not read on. Set in London, it’s the story of a dear, eccentric old lady (Katie Johnson) whose imaginary adventures amuse the local police. Mrs. Wilberforce takes as

a boarder the sinister Professor Marcus (Alec Guinness), the fellow members of whose string quintet-Cecil Parker, Danny Green (a Goon if ever there was one), Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom, all in top form-are really fellow conspirators in a daring robbery. When Mrs. W., who has unwittingly helped them, discovers what they’ve been up’ to, they plan to kill her but, unable to bring themselves to it, end up in selfliquidation (not so much of a paradox if you look at their characters), leaving Mrs. W. to tell another story which the police receive with good-humoured disbelief. This story, by William ("Genevieve") Rose, has been no less than brilliantly directed by Alexander Mackendrick. Setting, characters and, situation are established with telling economy, there’s (continued on next page)