The Lavender Hill Mob (1 hour, 21 minutes; b/w) might be the archetypal Ealing comedy. The film features everything the studio is famous for—loveable crooks, class conflict, London streets, avuncular bobbies, pratfalls, slapstick, tea, buns, and Alec Guinness—but with a Hitchcock-inspired thriller plot that makes it the most pacily enthralling of their features. Guinness and Stanley Holloway play the bumbling suburbanites whose plot to hijack a van full of gold bullion and smuggle it abroad disguised as Eiffel Tower paperweights leads to hijinks and hysteria. Charles Crichton’s direction is subtle but inventive.

Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524.

In 2023, the Clark celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the Manton Research Center building. We’re filling the calendar with a year-long series of events celebrating the building’s architecture and all the activities that happen inside, as well as the remarkable support of the Manton Foundation.

Image: The Lavender Hill Mob, Charles Crichton, 1951