Review of The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)
Seen in 2021.
A good-natured Ealing comedy. It’s funny how the writer touches on the selfishness and paranoia typical of criminal gangs, and specifically rejects this trope for the Lavender Hill mob: Lackery and Shorty both salute Holland as the best boss they’ve had, even in legal activities. It’s so wholesome that it’s farcical, and yet, in the end, Holland does get his comeuppance. Even in a comedy that takes such pains to show criminals as more kind and honest than other people, crime still wouldn’t pay on film for another few years.
References here: Porco Rosso (1992).