Vatican Films Review: The Lavender Hill Mob

This time, we’re taking a look at The Lavender Hill Mob, an early heist film along the lines of Ocean’s 11 or The Italian Job, released in 1951. While its successors feature elaborate heist plans ingeniously orchestrated by criminal masterminds, however, The Lavender Hill Mob’s plot is driven by criminal ineptitude that leads to a comedy of errors. 

The story follows Henry Holland (Sir Alec Guiness), a mild mannered bank clerk who has for decades overseen the transfer of shipments of gold bullion (or bars) that is the property of the Crown. He goes through the daily drudgery of traveling on the train to London for his job in a series of scenes that feels somewhat reminiscent of today’s world. At his home, a shabby hotel room, he reads chapters of an adventure novel to an elderly lodger named Mrs. Chalk, while they both delight in the adrenaline inducing plots so foreign to their law-abiding lifestyles. 

His quiet life changes, however, when he meets a man named Pendlebury who makes souvenir statues of the Eiffel Tower. Holland is suddenly struck with the idea that if he could just steal a shipment of gold, he could use Pendlebury’s smelter to cast the bullion into statues in order to sneak them out of the country for sale. They find assistance from a pair of lifelong criminal ruffians who provide the muscle needed to move the gold after the truck is stolen and thus the Lavender Hill Mob is born. 

The plan goes well at first, with the crew stealing the gold and the police believing that Holland was waylaid by bandits (in a scene where Holland almost drowns in the river after wandering around all tied up and blinded by tape over his eyes) and they even get the statues minted as well. Soon after, when Holland and Pendlebury go to France to move the statues, they get mixed up with real souvenirs and a few of the gold statues are bought by school children on a trip from England. 

Over the course of getting these statues back – while outright refusing to steal from children – the two thieves wind up in several close calls that eventually lead to Pendlebury’s capture and Holland’s escape. The film is bookended by scenes of Holland telling his story over lunch in a ritzy restaurant in Rio de Janeiro, and while in the beginning Holland’s situation seems lavish, when we return at the end, it is revealed that the entire movie was his confession to a plain clothes officer who had placed him under arrest.

Overall, The Lavender Hill Mob is a light hearted comedy that, while centered around a crime, does not tend to glamorize it. The constant mishaps along the way gives a sense of urgency to the whole affair and in the end the viewer is left with the understanding that the payout isn’t worth the stress or consequences. This can be seen especially in the discomfort Holland finds when he is upheld as a hero who tried to stop a theft that he himself arranged. 

With a script that does not particularly prize witty dialogue and the setting of a society so far removed from the world of today, however, many of the jokes in this comedy film fall flat. There were some slapstick scenes of a foot chase through a police expo, and we got a chuckle when a copper was singing along to “Old McDonald,” while riding along with Holland and Pendlebury as they attempted to remain incognito in a stolen police car, but on the whole, the humor generally lacked enough punch to get the laughter rolling.

The Vatican Film List places The Lavender Hill Mob in the “art” category and this is most likely because of its keen camera work. For example, there is an excellent scene at the top of the Eiffel Tower where the audience is treated to a full 360-degree rotation of the view. Still, with its emphasis on crime – even though the perpetrator gets his comeuppance at the end – it seems a curious inclusion on the Vatican’s list. 

It could be that it is a nod to the influence of The Lavender Hill Mob on subsequent “heist” films, which audiences have routinely turned out in droves to see. In Popcorn with the Pope, author Michael Ward muses that viewers “like to entertain the possibility of crime in a fictional setting where it can do no real harm. We go through the catharsis of seeing a felony committed and then enjoy order being restored.”

I would take this a step farther and suggest that the writer knew exactly what Ward was talking about – nearly 75 years before Ward wrote the book – and that is why he included Mrs. Chalk. This little old lady is the stand-in for the audience, and just as she finds her excitement in the books Holland reads to her, the audience is vicariously experiencing the thrill of giving into temptation, fictional as it is. 

Still, despite the lackluster jokes, The Lavender Hill Mob remains a fun watch in 2025. There is a unique innocence that Holland’s character brings to the subject matter that creates an interesting juxtaposition between the crime and the would-be criminal that keeps the viewers entertained throughout its hour-and-a-half runtime. It’s worth a watch just to see an entire society donning dresses and three-piece suits simply to go to work on a weekday.