A mild-mannered bank clerk, a million pounds in bullion, and a plan involving miniature Eiffel Towers — Alec Guinness makes crime feel like a very English hobby in The Lavender Hill Mob.
Released in 1951, The Lavender Hill Mob is an Ealing comedy in which Guinness plays Henry Holland, a bank clerk who has spent years escorting gold bullion and dreaming, very quietly, of stealing it. With the help of a fellow lodger, played by Stanley Holloway, he melts the gold down and smuggles it out of the country disguised as souvenirs.
The pleasure of the film is in its details: the careful planning, the nervous politeness of men who are not natural criminals, and the way a grand heist keeps colliding with ordinary life in London and Paris. Guinness plays Holland as a man who is respectable to his bones, which makes his dishonesty all the funnier — and, in the end, rather touching.
It is a signature Guinness performance because it rests on restraint. He does not wink at the audience or play the rogue. He plays a clerk who has finally acted on a daydream, and the film lets us enjoy both the scheme and the conscience that catches up with it.