What 1949 British comedy features a man who murders his relatives to inherit a dukedom?

The 1949 British comedy about a man who murders relatives to inherit a dukedom is Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Robert Hamer’s black comedy follows Louis D’Ascoyne Mazzini, whose mother was disowned by her aristocratic family. After her death, Louis learns that the family dukedom can pass through female as well as male descendants. He therefore decides to eliminate the eight relatives ahead of him in the line of succession.

Dennis Price plays Louis, while Alec Guinness portrays eight members of the D’Ascoyne family. Guinness’s rapid transformations—from banker and photographer to clergyman and military officer—are central to the film’s comic design. The polished narration and Edwardian setting contrast deliberately with Louis’s methodical murders.

The film is loosely based on Roy Horniman’s 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal. Its title comes from a line in the English song “The Beggar’s Opera.” Unlike the later Ealing comedies Passport to Pimlico and The Lavender Hill Mob, this film combines social satire with a dark inheritance plot and a deliberately unreliable narrator.