Even if one has already seen “The Lavender Hill Mob,” rejoining the merry band of budding bandits and proficient poachers portrayed in the 1951 movie classic will always delight. With its crackerjack direction, Oscar-winning screenplay, and superb acting, the film represents one of the best examples of British cinema in the period just after World War II, when the country was recovering from the Nazi Blitz and Europe’s near total subjugation to fascism. 

While primarily a comedy, its story of four men looking to get rich through criminal enterprise nevertheless pinpoints the anxiety felt by many English at the time, as they found themselves gratefully alive and yet returning to a life of dull normalcy. No better is this theme reflected than in lead character Henry, played masterfully by Alec Guinness. 

When we first see him, Henry is debonair and droll, tipping profusely and generously while at a bar in Rio. He even gives a young Audrey Hepburn, playing a local acquaintance, some spending money. Yet soon this scene shows itself to be a framing device from which the main story will be told. A year earlier, Henry was leading a straight and narrow life, one in which he felt himself whittling away as he toiled at the bank and lived in a boarding house called Lavender Hill. Beneath the quiet, fastidious veneer, though, Henry was concocting a plan to steal the bank’s daily infusion of gold bars.

Enter Mr. Pendlebury, a.k.a. Al, who becomes a fellow lodger at the residence and who just happens to own a factory that fashions tourist gewgaws out of molten lead and gold paint, many of which are shipped overseas. Al’s business provides the perfect conduit for Henry’s plan to transport the gold out of the country in a form that cannot be easily identified as the real thing. Yet the two upright citizens need support in their illegal endeavor, and so come up with a plan to attract professional thieves. When the duo meet Lackery and Shorty at a stakeout, the scene is alternately hilarious, suspenseful, and humanist — no mean feat.

From this point on, the movie moves swiftly to its heist sequence, our heroes’ attempts to evade police suspicion, and to scenes of the gold bullion being turned into Eiffel Tower paperweights to be shipped to Paris. Once there, though, Henry and Al discover that a mistake has been made and that they must chase after British schoolgirls in order to ensure that their crime is not uncovered. 

To say more may ruin the fun for first-time viewers, so additional plot points will not be disclosed. I will say this, though: The film’s framing and editing are as solid and contoured as a gold bar, and the storytelling and script as intricate and pointed as the Eiffel Tower. Director Charles Crichton, screenwriter (and former policeman) T.E.B. Clarke, cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, and editor Seth Holt would all go on to work on bigger films, but the high level of craft seen in “The Lavender Hill Mob” undoubtedly represents the pinnacle of their early careers.

In an Oscar-nominated performance, Guinness definitely ups the movie’s comedic quotient. The renowned actor’s usage of uneasy smirks and wide-eyed expressions, frequently tilting his chin into his neck, may come off as a bit affected to modern audiences, but these idiosyncrasies only betray his weird intelligence and increase our fellowship with the fey, nerdy man. 

Indeed, we even sense a latent homosexual aura about him and Al, and encourage them along. Providing the perfect comic cap to the proceedings, Mr. Guinness gives Henry the inability to pronounce /r/ sounds, heightening the irony when their fortunes begin to reverse due to a translation error related to the letter.

While watching, we actively root for him and the Shakespeare-quoting Al to succeed, with each set piece of exquisite tension and action in the film’s second half increasing not only our anxiety but our hope for them. Maybe it’s the movie’s consistently daft and subversive humor that endears us most to these bumbling lawbreakers, making us wish we were along for the ride. Whatever the case may be, sign us up for another ride with “The Lavender Hill Mob,” showing at Film Forum May 10-16.