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FM2 : British and American Film. Kind Hearts and Coronets. Briefly summarise the plot of the film What are the main themes? How does it link to the social context of the time? In what ways can it be seen as ‘ quintessentially British’?. Light-hearted more humane cynical behaviour - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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FM2: British and American Film
Kind Hearts and Coronets• Briefly summarise the plot of the film
• What are the main themes?
• How does it link to the social context of the time?
• In what ways can it be seen as ‘ quintessentially
British’?
Kind Hearts and Coronets is different from the usual Ealing Comedies: the film treats the values of English culture in an angrier,
more elegant, more cynical and less cautious way; it mercilessly exposes forms of behaviour, rituals and class differences
without, however, reconstituting them in the end, as other Ealing films do
Light-heartedmore humanecynicalbehaviourhumorousclass
Light-heartedhumanecynical
angrierelegant
cautious
rituals
comedicBut HOW does it do this?
Where does Kind Hearts start?• It begins twice, if not, three times:
tastefully stylised credits
family photographs sentimentally framed in the Edwardian manner
suggests a film of quiet nostalgia?
yearningly old-fashioned music – aria from Don Giovani
Where does Kind Hearts start?• Then the film proper starts:
ending of the Duke’s life and Elliot’s last execution (all about endings?)
Mr Elliot’s mournful enthusiasm
establishes the black humour
feeling of social insecurity ‘how does one address a Duke?’
Where does Kind Hearts start?• Then the memoir self-consciously makes a new start:
Louis narrative now slips back before his birth and starts over again with his parents’ first meeting
That beginning is Louis’ birth – and another
ending
With so little time remaining to
complete my story, it is difficult to choose
where to begin. Perhaps I should
begin at the beginning
Where does Kind Hearts start?• All this is very strange and very self-conscious
•Why would Hamer and Dighton choose to open their film this way, with these hesitancies and false starts?
•Why?
Where does Kind Hearts start?• It really begins with a book, Israel Rank by Roy Horniman
• Horniman: homosexual, socially adrift, Greek aristocracy + navy• Double pun on ‘Rank’• Jewish taint – ‘Israel’• Anti-Semitic?• How interpreted as not anti-Semitic?• Complications for Ealing?
Importance of names:•Why is the hero called Louis Mazzini?
•What are the significance of some of the other names?
• Sibella, Ethlered, Edith etc
Key scene – Louis’ mother’s death:• Louis, having killed his father just by
being born, now loses his mother in a tragic tram accident near Clapham Junction. We see Louis kneeling at her bedside, fading she requests a burial at Chalfont’s family vault. She dies, dropping in that instant from her frail hand the heart-shaped photograph of her dead husband. Louis weeps uncontrollably.
• A drearily sentimental deathbed scene?
• Louis posture – faintly ridiculous
• photograph drops clunkingly
• air of theatrical awkwardness - tableau
• off-key effect is undoubtedly comic
• Why is a tram accident near Clapham Junction funny?
• We are not seeing life, or even the representation – but the parody of
the representation
Balcon told Hamer: You are trying to sell that most unsaleable
commodity to the British – irony. Good luck to you
Written Consolidation:• Think back to the quotation at the start of the lesson:
•Write a paragraph, to hand in at the end of the lesson your ideas about how/why Kind Hearts does this
Kind Hearts and Coronets…treats the values of English culture in an angrier, more
elegant, more cynical and less cautious way; it mercilessly exposes forms of behaviour,
rituals and class differences