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That “The Ladykillers” star Alec Guinness be fully aware of the horror of his grotesque false teeth when projected on giant movie screens after this last great comedy from Ealing Studios hit theaters in 1955, the illustrious British actor’s choice of choppers has nevertheless been one for the ages. In my opinion, they have their place alongside Marlon Brando’s Don Vito cotton tufts and whatever is on the lower half of Immortan Joe’s face in “Mad Max: Fury Road” in the Hall of Fame of Upgrades. the mouth of the film.

As criminal mastermind Professor Marcus, a gang leader preparing for a cunning heist with an unwitting participant, Guinness grin crooked, oddly spaced – like a row of stained, upside down gravestones all increasing its conspiratorial giggles or harshly manipulative threats – is a perfect metaphor for the quirky allure of this funniest and deadliest English cinematic farce. After surviving the ignominy of a terrible Coen Brothers remake (itself as reckless theft), the original creation of director Alexander Mackendrick and screenwriter William Rose can now be seen again in the dark of theaters, his three-band Technicolor vision of lovingly restored manners and menace.

As far as I know, there is no such designation as the ECU (Ealing Cinematic Universe), but in the late 1940s and 1950s fans of the legendary British film studio could have told you what linked so many of their most beloved releases (“Passport to Pimlico”, “Whiskey Galore”, “The Man in the White Suit”): the post-war English tradition treated as admirably indefatigable, heartily intelligent and eminently satirizable. Think of Hollywood after the Great Depression, when romanticizing and taunting the filthy rich gave us this uniquely American genre, wacky comedy.

In “The Ladykillers,” this carry-on figure is an old Mrs. Wilberforce, well known to the police station for her harmless tales of imaginary wickedness, and played by future BAFTA winner Katie Johnson with all the distracted naivety of a grandmother who had wandered on the set of a horror movie. Part of this ensemble, however, would be this widower’s own comfortable and cozy Victorian home in lavender and lace, located at the end of an unassuming street but overlooking a steep railway bridge. When cinematographer Otto Heller delivers a striking aerial view in tandem with Tristram Cary’s mischievous and menacing score, it comically suggests the kind of Gothic venue best left alone for visitors.

And yet the waxy-faced, Guinness-toothed demon sees nothing more inside the dusty walls than a gentle, harmless inhabitant whose room for rent provides the perfect cover for a project requiring him and his men – including a sinister-style Herbert Lom and a doughy Peter. Salespeople before fighting on the other side of the law in the Pink Panther movies – to pretend they’re a traveling string quartet. But why, Professor Marcus wonders aloud to his long-awaited landlady, aren’t the images hanging evenly? Bombing in wartime, Ms. Wilberforce calmly explains. In Guinness’ hilarious and offhand assessment of what he’s achieving now, it’s a structurally sound but forever unbalanced house – “Charming” – a million Ealing comedies could flourish.

What follows is the ultimate fractured fairy tale, in which a robbery in the first act is achieved with all the cross-sectional suspense of a Hitchcock movie, while the second act collapsing into multiple murders is the pinnacle of the prank call. Though Rose claims to have pulled the coal-black plot out of her Oscar-nominated screenplay “The Ladykillers” formed entirely from a dream, the central gag of the story – that a weirdly disruptive horde turns out to be. not up to a provocative little old lady – has been interpreted beyond her superficial attack on English, as a commentary in her time on the struggle of Labor in a struggling postwar Britain. comfortable wresting control from old world conservatives.

But you don’t have to know all of this to enjoy the skillful blend of the macabre and the genteel on screen – character humor, cinematic flair, and tonal daring in sync like few other comedies have ever achieved. Twisted smiles guaranteed.