Film Review
G. K. Chesterton's famous fictional priest Father Brown was a gift of a
role for Alec Guinness, who brings the appropriate mix of godliness,
mischievousness and humane fallibility to his portrayal in Robert
Hamer's amiable adaptation of Chesterton's short story
The Blue Cross, the first of the
Father Brown stories, initially published in 1910. Although his
best work was behind him - Ealing's
It Always Rains on Sunday
(1947) and
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
are two classics of British cinema - Hamer was still a more than
capable filmmaker, able to get the best from his performers and wring
as much drama and humour from a script as decency and good taste would
permit. Apparently targeted at a family audience,
The Detective is as much fun for
adults as it is for children, its main pleasure being the ensemble of
great British actors it ropes in for our amusement.
Complementing Alec Guinness's Father Brown is a likeably villainous
Peter Finch who, as a supreme master-of-disguise, always seems to end
up looking like Peter Finch. Sid James shows up briefly to
chauffeur a seductive-as-ever Joan Greenwood between scenes (nice work
if you can get it), Cecil Parker gives a humorous turn as the stressed
out bishop Father Brown appears determined to send to an early grave,
Bernard Lee is the inspector whose talents do not, evidently, involve
catching master criminals and Gérard Oury (long before he became
one of France's most successful filmmakers) is even more useless as
Lee's French counterpart. Best of the bunch is Ernest Thesiger,
who turns in a pleasing cameo as a dusty old French nobleman with a
penchant for breaking spectacles. Hamer went on to direct
Guinness in two more films -
The
Scapegoat (1959) and
To
Paris, with Love (1955) - before his alcohol addiction brought
his career to a tragically premature end.
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Robert Hamer film:
School for Scoundrels (1960)
Film Synopsis
Undeterred by a tip-off from the police that a French master-criminal,
Gustave Flambeau, intends stealing a cross belonging to Saint
Augustine, Father Ignatius Brown decides to carry the holy relic to
Rome on his person. On the way, he befriends another priest, who
turns out to be none other than Flambeau. Once Flambeau has
managed to get away with the cross, Father Brown contrives a plan with
his friend Lady Warren to bring the criminal out into the open.
His motive for doing so is not to see Flambeau put behind bars, but to
save his soul. Unfortunately, Flambeau prove to be a wilier
adversary than he had supposed and Lady Warren's antique chess set is
stolen right under his nose...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.