Once More With Ealing! Season heading to UK cinemas

1949 saw the release of a trio of classic British comedies that really cemented Ealing’s place in history as this country’s finest film studios: PASSPORT TO PIMLICO, KIND HEARTS & CORONETS and WHISKY GALORE! 75 years later, these films still seem as fresh, innovative and, above all, as funny as ever.

To celebrate the 75^th Anniversary of these landmark films, and to compliment the theatrical reissue of a new 4k restoration of Ealing’s sweetest crime caper THE LAVENDER HILL MOB (out 29 March), cinemas nationwide will be offering a selection of Ealing classics, both comedy and drama, under the banner ONCE MORE WITH EALING!

PASSPORT TO PIMLICO and WHISKY GALORE! are hilarious celebrations of British eccentricity, ingenuity, and promote a healthy disdain for authority coupled with a not inconsiderable dose of anarchy. Something much more wicked lurks in KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS, Ealing’s darkest, cleverest, sexiest, and most perverse comedy. Surely an inspiration for SALTBURN, this acerbic tale of social climbing stars Dennis Price as Louis Mazzini, cast out from the bosom of his aristocratic family, as a baby thanks to the “unsuitable” marriage of his mother, who returns as an adult to reclaim his birth-right by despatching everyone (mainly Alec Guinness, in multiple roles) that stands in his way.

Other classics to savour include Ealing stalwart Alec Guinness and his gang of thieves undone by Katie Johnson and her parrots in gloriously restored 4k Technicolor THE LADYKILLERS, ground-breaking and provocative dramas such as POOL OF LONDON and IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY, the archetypal portmanteau horror championed by everyone from John Landis to Kenneth Branagh, DEAD OF NIGHT,  and that man Guinness again, facing off against big business as they try to quash his miracle invention in THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT. And that’s just to name a few of the Ealing treats in store.

THE LAVENDER HILL MOB is released as a 4K UHD Collector’s Edition and on Digital on 22 April.

KIND HEARTS & CORONETS is released for the first time on UHD on 22 April.

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