KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949)

Kind Hearts and Coronets is a 1949 British black comedy film. It features Dennis Price, Joan Greenwood, Valerie Hobson and Alec Guinness; Guinness plays nine characters. The plot is loosely based on the novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal (1907) by Roy Horniman. It concerns Louis D’Ascoyne Mazzini, the son of a woman disowned by her aristocratic family for marrying out of her social class. After her death Louis decides to take revenge on the family, and to take the dukedom, by murdering the eight people ahead of him in succession to the title.