BEFORE: Back-to-back caper/heist films - and a chance to send Birthday SHOUT-out #27 to Alec Guinness, born 4/2/1914 and last seen in "Kind Hearts and Coronets". Yes, I realize that the man stopped having birthdays as of 2000, but the sentiment is still there. I didn't realize that Peter Sellers was also in this film, that makes linking from last night's film easy. Meryl Streep did a voice in "Fantastic Mr. Fox", and she was also in "Postcards From the Edge" with Shirley Maclaine, who was in "Being There" with Peter Sellers.
THE PLOT: Five oddball criminal types planning a robbery rent rooms from an octogenarian widow under the pretext that they are classical musicians.
AFTER: This is a classic dark comedy, one that got remade later on by the Coen Brothers (damn, I love Coen Brothers films, I should add that one to the list...) about a group of thieves who devise a "perfect" robbery - one in which a kind old lady is used to deliver the cash, as her involvement would never be suspected by the police.
As you might imagine, things hit a snag when the proper English landlady figures out that the 5 men who rented her room have not, in fact, been rehearsing as a string quintet, but instead using her boarding house to plan and execute said robbery. Now the thieves are faced with a terrible dilemma - leave and risk capture once the old lady goes to the police, or find a way to eliminate her.
It's a tight little situation that is filled with potential - every move is a potential game-changer, and it forces the true nature of each criminal to be revealed, some just don't have the stones for murder, especially for murdering such a dear old proper "mum" - so the group is fractured and begins to fall apart.
Also starring Herbert Lom (who later co-starred with Sellers as Chief Inspector Dreyfus, Inspector Clouseau's boss and nemesis in all the Pink Panther films).
RATING: 5 out of 10 gramophone records
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