The Alec Guinness vehicle Kind Hearts and Coronets is an exceptional example of British social comedy

The Alec Guinness vehicle - he plays the role(s) of 8 (I think) members of the same titled lineage - Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) is a classic British comedy in all senses, funny, well-writtten, well acted, smart-looking, and perhaps most of all a serious take on the idiocy of the British caste system, still in place (sadly). The film - directed by Robert Hamer (about whom I know nothing - this was anti-auteur territory, part of the old-guard era in which studio (Ealing in this case) and star meant more than the director. In essence, thefilm is about a young man who learns from his soon-to-die mother that he's 10th in line for a Dukedom. As he starts out his life as a sales clerk in a women's wear store, he begins to plot a path by which he could attain his title as Duke and embarks on a hilarious course in which he murders each of the 8 or so ahead of him in the lineage (one dies w/out his assistance). Of course the film is just a romp - if it were in any way remotely possible it would stand as the greatest indictment of all time of Scotland Yard - but beneath the comedy lies a social critique, which we see right from the outset (the first scene involves the executioner, on the eve of the scheduled hanging of the newly entitled Duke, worrying about the proper form of address to a man of his station). Some of the dialog is sharp in the way that only the British have mastered: For ex., in a courting scene the young man's love interest complains about her husband, who on their honeymoon insisted on visiting museums: He wants to expand his mind. Response: There's certainly room. Guinness is funny throughout, in particular as a doddering Anglican minister (the young man posits that the family follows the familiar course of sending it's idiotic son to a career in the Church). All told, a crisp social comedy typical (though exceptionally good) for its era, and a forerunner of the urbane social comedies of such lights as the now-disgraced Woody Allen.