DECADES BEFORE swinging a lightsaber, Alec Guinness appeared in a number of charming post-war comedies for Britain's Ealing Studios. These are breezy, small, winning movies, and this week, the NW Film Center shows four of the best known, all starring Guinness in lighthearted roles that are miles away from the sagacity of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the grim steadfastness of The Bridge on the River Kwai's Colonel Nicholson.

The most delightful of the bunch is 1951's The Lavender Hill Mob (screening Fri Jan 23, Mon Jan 26), in which Guinness plays a weedy bank clerk who dreams of ripping off his employer. He forms an ad hoc gang with the scheme of melting down bullion and shipping it to Paris in the form of mini-Eiffel Tower souvenirs. Guinness portrays another criminal mastermind in the original The Ladykillers from 1955 (Sat Jan 24, Sun Jan 25), brandishing false teeth and an almost Dickensian sense of villainy—no doubt sourced from his work with David Lean in the '40s (Great Expectations, Oliver Twist).

Guinness also plays eight members of a royal family in 1949's Kind Hearts and Coronets (Fri Jan 23, Sun Jan 25). Dennis Price must kill all eight in order to inherit the dukedom, and Guinness' subtle virtuosity—the Klumps these aren't—is impressively hilarious. The murder-minded humor was pitch-black for its day; apart from Guinness' appearances, the movie feels a little fusty now.

But Guinness' most fully lived-in performance comes in 1951's terrific, deeply satirical The Man in the White Suit (Sat Jan 24, Mon Jan 26). He's a chemistry whiz attempting to create an unbreakable fiber for the textile mill where he works—as a janitor. No matter; he breaks into the lab and works on his madcap experiments, wreaking havoc along the way. Guinness' unshakable resolve, glinting beneath his mousy exterior, lends this—and his other Ealing roles—a true sense of the actor's magnitude.