Kind Hearts and Coronets is a British black comedy film of 1949 starring Dennis Price, Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, and Valerie Hobson. Guinness famously plays eight members of the D'Ascoyne family. The plot is loosely based on the novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal (1907) by Roy Horniman, with the screenplay written by Robert Hamer and John Dighton and the film directed by Hamer. The film's title derives from Tennyson's poem Lady Clara Vere de Vere: "Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood."
Kind Hearts and Coronets is listed in Time magazine's top 100[3] and also in the BFI Top 100 British films. In 2011 the film was digitally restored and re-released in selected British cinemas.
In Edwardian Britain, Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price), tenth Duke of Chalfont, writes his memoirs while in prison awaiting his death by hanging the next morning. Most of the film consists of a flashback in which Louis narrates the events leading to his imprisonment.
After his mother, the daughter of the 7th Duke of Chalfont, elopes with an Italian opera singer named Mazzini (also played by Price), she is disowned by her aristocratic family, the D'Ascoynes, for marrying beneath her. The couple are poor but happy, until Mazzini dies upon seeing Louis, his newborn son, for the first time.
Clasificación [ CM DVD 00935 ] Disponible en DVD, 4 Piso BJB)