The League of Gentlemen

This film apparently inspired the British comic troupe "The League Of Gentlemen".

I'm not surprised.

The film was directed by the popularly underrated Basil Dearden and starred the equally underrated Jack Hawkins.

What a shame they're so underrated!

The cast were brilliantly chosen and the plot is inspired. It would probably be impossible to remake this film acceptably well - it is very much of it's time.

Nigel Patrick will tell you, old darling, that you should watch this film with warmth and humour - the way it was made.

An enjoyable effort in the Ealing vein, more specifically in the black comic vein of "Kind Hearts and Coronets" or "The Naked Truth", with fairly upper-class individuals gleefully straying from the straight and narrow. It is a mark of the film's whimsical success that one is made to sympathise with what is basically a gang of upper-class soldiers resorting to criminality. The wit, camaraderie and very subtle pathos of the ex-soldiers is very well worked - adrift as they are in peacetime, the planned heist provides some scope for their talents.

Most of the actors make their mark in some way - Roger Livesey, Nigel Patrick and particularly Jack Hawkins, are wonderful. Robert Coote is wonderfully spot-on in his late appearance as Brigadier Bunny Warren.

The script is finely crafted and while not up to the standard of "Kind Hearts...", this is quite a fine little film, always mildly winning in some way throughout its duration. Rating:- ****/*****

What a wonderful short review from Stewart Naunton, above! I thought this was just a sleeper movie that only I appreciated.

The gentlemen in question are men who were very good in the War but not very successful or appreciated between wars. What is more appropriate than that they extract a long-deserved payment by plotting and executing this intricate caper?

This is a movie with a deep moral message. The robbers are in the right, and it is a real shame that these heroes, for heroes they are, have to get nabbed at the end of the film. By rights they should not only have got away with their caper, they should have taken back their country from the small minds and souls that had commandeered it.

"You Never Had It So Good," was Macmillan's slogan in '59, but these ex-officers seem to have missed out on the fun everyone else is having. They have been shabbily treated by their country and you just have to root for them as they recover their talents and daring.

The movie makes a good companion piece for Basil Dearden's 1961 film 'Victim', which is thematically dissimilar but very much the same in appearance and feel.

This is a heist film that really rises above the ante of its genre, due to the motivations behind the main characters. The characters are all former army officers, who were dismissed due to misconduct on their behalf, with the exception of the mastermind behind the robbery, who brings them all together. His name is Hyde, and he was halfway to becoming a full colonel before the army forced him into retirement. He is separated from his wife, and without army life, he has nothing left to do. So for the fun of it, rather than the money, he organises a heist.

The acting in the film is superb. The expressions that Jack Hawkins uses when playing Hyde signify that he is in it for the thrills rather than the loot. He looks on with joy, rather than stern, careful consideration, as he and his men organise everything that they need to do. He is in power again, since he is the head of the operation, and since he knows that everyone who he picks will want to go along. All of his men are not only crooks but ones with financial problems. And as the only one with plenty of money and no criminal record, he enjoys the idea that he can duck out at any time.

The supporting actors also show in the end that they are enjoying their work. While initially in it for the money, the return to army regulations - by which Hyde runs the operation - excites them. Nigel Patrick and Bryan Forbes are particularly good as the more suave members of the heist team. One problem though is that we never get to know the characters really well. They are defined by what we are told about them, rather than their actions, particularly with the Padre, played by Roger Livesey. A former quartermaster, he shows excitement at being able to take up the job again, but he is given very limited screen time, and his involvement with acts unbefiting a priest is oft mentioned, but his personality rarely shows anything more than that he is just another one of the men.

I find it rather odd that the film is marketed as a comedy. There is one section, when they raid the army, that is bouncing with humorous touches, and Gerald Harper, as a nervous army captain, gives off an excellent performance. The rest of the film though only has the slightest edge of humour, from Hyde badmouthing his wife to a rather awkwardly inserted cameo by Oliver Reed as a homosexual performer. The comedy is not important though, and the plot is intriguing enough as it is, but it does make the raiding the army section stand out, as it jars the film's mood and style.

If not flawless, it is still a very well made film. The rousing, grand music score is excellent, not just because it fits well over the action, but because it is sort of a parody of the scores of old war movies. The film looks great in black and white, and some of the sequences are very well shot. One example that stands out in memory is a shot where the camera goes through the walls of two different rooms, crabbing to the right, and swooping a little bit, almost like a person trying to not bump into a vase as he passes through a wall. The visual look of the film and the audio are just excellent, and well suited to the interesting screenplay.

Well ... if your name is "Half Colonel" Hyde, you thank Her Majesty very much, and take your future into your own hands!

Hyde, played to gruff perfection by Jack Hawkins, is supremely proud of his meticulous planning skills, gained and sharpened in a 25 year military career. Ignominiously pensioned off, he puts these strengths to good use in plotting a daring million-pound robbery.

As an ex-military man, Hyde is aware that his "operation" cannot succeed without putting together a squad of the very best experts. Displaying the kind of guile and ruthlessness that earned him his lofty rank, he also knows that it's rather handy if one's selected team has nothing much to lose.

The film opens by introducing us to Hyde's hand-picked candidates in turn - each receiving a mysterious invitation to lunch, stapled to one half of a crisp new fiver none of them can afford to ignore. A rum bunch they are, too - we witness a splendidly gloomy panorama of post- war London, scattered with promiscuous wives, doomed businesses, loveless marriages and good times going rapidly bad.

Enough, surely, to make a fellow wish he were back in the army - especially should he happen to be a bogus clergyman, an "odd man out" or simply a chap who always makes the same mistake twice ...

Was late-1950s Britain, in fact, a land fit for heroes? Does pride come before a fall? Or might crime, perhaps just this once, pay?

Join these esteemed Gentlemen for a wonderfully enjoyable caper movie, and find out for yourself! The story entertains (and possibly even informs) throughout - particularly to be relished is the interplay between Hawkins and the always-watchable Nigel "Old Darling" Patrick.

Notwithstanding a youthful Oliver Reed's jarringly unfunny cameo, this is easily one of my top ten movies.

May we be spared for ever the Hollywood or - even worse - the BritPack re-make!!