Kind Hearts Redux

Now, about two and a half years ago I wrote about the strange experience I'd had when watching (rewatching) Kind Hearts and Coronets on the TV.  About an incredibly intense feeling of recognition.  I picked up on this in a few other posts.  And now Kind Hearts and Coronets has been rereleased, and you can see it at (a few) cinemas.

So I had to go and see what it was like on the big screen, to see if the same effect was there, and off we toddled to the BFI on the South Bank.  I hadn't been there since they'd remodelled it (after the demise of the Museum of the Moving Image) and I was quite impressed.  And we got there with enough time to nose around the restaurants and look in at the bookshop.  But I digress.

The experience wasn't the same as before - this was the first time I'd seen it on a large screen - every other time I'd seen the film, I realised rather belatedly, it had been on the telly.  So this was something of a new experience from the start.  So although I still remembered huge amounts of it, many details of word and image,  the feeling of intensity I'd had before was missing.

But it was still funny - and there were many great lines I seemed to be hearing for the first time. 

And I had forgotten how brilliant Dennis Price was as the murdering Louis Mazzini.  And that in addition to Alec Guiness's multiple disguises, Price also dresses up as the bicycling Bishop of Matabeleland (to kill The Parson).  Wonderfully entertaining, and that sequence of the film also includes:

"I always say my West window has all the exuberance of Chaucer without, happily, any of the concomitant crudities of his period". (Guinness)

But if I start quoting I could go on all night, so I'll stop there.

Oh, and I spotted Richard Wattis (by voice alone! his face isn't shown) in some of the House of Lords scenes...