Kipps

Kipps

Year: 1941

Runtime: 111 mins

Language: English

Director: Carol Reed

DramaComedy

A young tradesman learns that money doesn’t necessarily bring happiness. Drama.

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Timeline & Setting – Kipps (1941)

Explore the full timeline and setting of Kipps (1941). Follow every major event in chronological order and see how the environment shapes the story, characters, and dramatic tension.

Time period

Location

Folkestone, England

Folkestone is the primary setting, a seaside town where Kipps works in a drapery and where social hierarchies shape relationships. The story follows his rise from apprentice to wealthy landowner, highlighting class tension in a provincial English town. The town's close-knit society provides the backdrop for ambition, romance, and financial drama.

🏖️ Seaside town 🏰 Gentry culture

Last Updated: October 04, 2025 at 15:20

Main Characters – Kipps (1941)

Meet the key characters of Kipps (1941), with detailed profiles, motivations, and roles in the plot. Understand their emotional journeys and what they reveal about the film’s deeper themes.

Kipps (adult) — Michael Redgrave

An unremarkable young man who inherits a fortune and confronts the social expectations of wealth. He is ambitious, easily influenced by mentors, and torn between love and social climbing. His arc moves from apprentice to confident, middle-class landowner who seeks stability with Ann and a family.

💼 Ambition 🏛️ Wealth 🎯 Determination

Ann Pornick (adult) — Phyllis Calvert

Kipps's lifelong love who becomes a parlour maid. She remains devoted to Kipps and embodies steadfast, practical affection within a rigid class system. Their relationship anchors his personal life even as wealth reshapes his social world.

💖 Love 💼 Loyalty 👧 Servitude

Ann Pornick (girl) — Diana Calderwood

The younger Ann, a seaside memory who shares the half sixpence with Kipps. She represents Kipps's first, simpler affection before social ambitions complicate his life.

💞 First Love 🪙 Coin memory 👧 Youth

Helen Walshingham — Diana Wynyard

A member of the local gentry who becomes Kipps's love interest but is mindful of his lower social status. She safely navigates personal desire with social propriety and later reveals resilience in the face of financial ruin caused by Ronnie.

👑 Gentry 💔 Love 🧭 Gatekeeping

Ronnie Walshingham — Michael Wilding

Helen's brother and Kipps's solicitor, whose manipulative financial schemes deplete Kipps's fortune. He embodies risk and deceit within high society's financial side.

💸 Wealth 🕵️ Deception 🔀 Gambler

Chester Coote — Max Adrian

An ambitious self-improvement lecturer who guides Kipps toward new skills and social climbing. He is persuasive and sometimes manipulative, steering Kipps toward opportunities that complicate his life.

🗣️ Persuasion 🧭 Influence 🧰 Guidance

Mrs. Walshingham — Helen Haye

A matriarchal figure within the gentry circle, representing traditional authority and social gatekeeping. She plays a role in Kipps's engagement with Helen and the maintenance of class boundaries.

👩‍👧‍👦 Matriarchy 🏰 Authority 🧭 Social gates

Kipps (boy) — Philip Frost

Kipps as a fourteen-year-old stepping into an apprenticeship, setting the stage for his later life of work, ambition, and early romantic tension with Ann.

🧑‍🎓 Apprenticeship 🧭 Early life 💫 Promise

Chitterlow

An actor and playwright who befriends Kipps, sharing stories of theater and helping propel him toward future success. He serves as a catalyst for Kipps's discovery of opportunity.

🎭 Theatre ✨ Opportunist

Last Updated: October 04, 2025 at 15:20

Major Themes – Kipps (1941)

Explore the central themes of Kipps (1941), from psychological, social, and emotional dimensions to philosophical messages. Understand what the film is really saying beneath the surface.

💼 Social Mobility

Kipps' inheritance upends his life, thrusting him into a world of wealth and social expectations. The film tracks how ambition and careful self-improvement, guided by outsiders, clash with inherited class norms. The tension between merit and birth drives relationships and decisions, revealing both opportunity and risk in climbing the social ladder. The story shows mobility as a fragile balance between luck, effort, and social gates.

💑 Love and Class

Kipps falls for Helen and is drawn to Ann, but their fortunes and stations complicate the romance. The couple's vows collide with societal expectations and the gatekeeping of the gentry. The film uses romance to highlight class boundaries and the precariousness of happiness built on shifting wealth. The ending suggests enduring affection can triumph, but only if social constraints are navigated.

🎭 Fortune and Fate

A sudden inheritance changes Kipps' life, turning him from a plain clerk into a man of means. Missteps and mismanagement by Ronnie Walshingham threaten to strip away his fortune, underscoring the fragility of wealth. The arrival of Chitterlow's successful play and Kipps' eventual bookshop offers a new, stable path, suggesting luck, talent, and good timing shape fate. The story presents wealth as contingent on both personal choices and external opportunities.

Last Updated: October 04, 2025 at 15:20

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Kipps Summary

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Kipps Summary

Kipps Timeline

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Kipps Timeline

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