The Ladykillers

On a cul-de-sac in 1955 London, an elderly widow named Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) lets her upstairs rooms to a stooped, grinning stranger, Professor Marcus (Alec Guinness). He arrives with four friends who say they are classical musicians, in fact a gang planning a bank robbery, and they set up a string quintet as cover. Alexander Mackendrick stages the comedy in cramped, shabby rooms, so the crooks always seem to be crowded into one another.