Alec Guinness

Stanley Holloway

Sid James

Alfie Bass

Marjorie Fielding

Edie Martin

John Salew

Ronald Adam

Arthur Hambling

Gibb McLaughlin

John Gregson

Clive Morton

Sydney Tafler

Marie Burke

Audrey Hepburn

William Fox

Michael Trubshawe

Ann Heffernan

Jacques Brunius

Eugene Deckers

Paul Demel

Andreas Malandrinos

Cyril Chamberlain

Tony Quinn

Moultrie Kelsall

Christopher Hewett

Meredith Edwards

Patrick Barr

David Davies

Robert Shaw

Richard Davies

T. E. B. Clarke

Charles Crichton

Phyllis Crocker

Ernest Irving

Frederick Buckman

Michael Balcon

Seth Holt

Norman Priggen

Harry Wilton

Anthony Mendleson

Stephen Dalby

Hal Mason

Slim Hand

Geoffrey Faithfull

William Kellner

Jeff Seaholme

Ernest Taylor

Douglas Slocombe

Sydney Pearson

Michael Truman

Les Hammond

Georges Auric

Comedy

Crime

The Lavender Hill Mob

Ealing Studios

The Rank Organisation

United Kingdom

Henry Holland ( Alec Guinness) is a clerk at the Bank of England.  Because of his perfect record and self-effacing manner, he is considered thoroughly trustworthy and is even assigned to accompany shipments of gold.  In reality Holland has a carefully hidden desire to commit the Perfect Crime, and is waiting for the big chance.  The big chance comes when he befriends another frustrated man, Pendlebury  (Stanley Halloway) who has the foreign connections that Holland needs.

The result is a hilarious parody of the traditional gangster movie, which plays all the traditional tropes for laughs -- a holdup, a hostage thrown into the Thames, a French scene against the exotic backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, a car-chase.  There is even a dizzying rush down the Eiffel Tower stairs that anticipates, in a comic mode, Hitchcock's VERTIGO.

Holland's paradoxical character, half 90-pound weakling and half criminal mastermind, was of course designed to exploit Guinness's talent for playing multiple personalities.

Though nobody knew it at the time, the movie would also become famous for one of Audrey Hepburn's first speaking parts, as a pretty waitress at the very start of the film.

English

4K Restoration Official Trailer

Original Trailer