Kind Hearts and Coronets

Kind Hearts and Coronets is a British black comedy film of 1949 starring Dennis Price, Joan Greenwood, Valerie Hobson, and Alec Guinness, who famously plays eight distinct characters. The plot is loosely based on the novel Israel Rank The Autobiography of a Criminal 1907 by Roy Horniman, with the screenplay written by Robert Hamer and John Dighton and the film directed by Hamer. The title refers to a line in Tennysons poem Lady Clara Vere de Vere Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood.

In Edwardian England, Louis DAscoyne Mazzini Dennis Price awaits his hanging the next morning. A flashback of the events leading to his sentence ensues, narrated by Louis as he writes his memoirs.After his mother, a daughter of the seventh Duke of Chalfont, elopes with an Italian opera singer named Mazzini also played by Price, she is disowned by the aristocratic DAscoyne family for marrying beneath her station. The couple are poor but happy, until Mazzini dies upon seeing Louis, his newborn son, for the first time. Louis mother teaches him her familys pedigree. Louiss only childhood friends are Sibella Joan Greenwood and her brother, a local doctors children. ........

Source: Wikipedia