One of my favourite heist movies is Basil Dearden’s The League of Gentleman (1960). A crack team of lovable rogues is assembled by a charming mastermind to rob a bank. Getting away with it for this group of dissatisfied ex-servicemen is only half the job as civilian irritations start to get in the way. The film is based on the 1958 novel of the same name by John Boland.
The film is available on Amazon.
Roger Livesey plays Mycroft, a bogus priest, who is introduced making a quick getaway from a seedy lodging house after his landlady tells him the police have called. He packs his clothes into a suitcase that’s half full of girlie magazines — copies of Kamera, In Focus and Solo. The magazines were borrowed of the set of Peeping Tom which was being made at the same time at Pinewood. Peeping Tom was directed by Michael Powell, who had made three films with Roger Livesey: Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), I Know Where I’m Going! (1945) and A Matter of Life and Death (1946) — all of which are must watch classics.
