It's odd that "gently comic" (as another reviewer put in) usually means "quite unfunny". Or rather, it means "we laugh at a harmless, good character". This film could have done with trying less hard to make us laugh. I can't stand seasickness jokes (tho I rather liked Flambeau's line when disguised as a priest "I must partake of the suffering of others"). And the bit where Brown and the librarian keep dropping/stepping on spectacles - I watched it stone-faced. Brown is quite bumbling enough without being "blind as a bat without my glasses" as well. The film opens well with Brown apparently robbing a safe (of course he's putting the money back). Sid James and Cecil Parker give sterling support, and the friendship between Brown and Lady Warren is touching, and I love the garage man who whisks the priest into the dance. This could have been a good film. Occasionally Guinness becomes entirely serious about saving Flambeau's soul and we glimpse what it might have been. It's based on the first Father Brown story in which Flambeau appears, and some of the plot is retained - the chase across town/country, the swapping of parcels, the wrestling holds, the man who's unmasked because he gives the wrong answer about... in the original story it's sin, not drive shafts. Read the story, it's one of the best (also read the one about the silver forks and the extra waiter). And it whisks you through a wild vision of Victorian London (Camden Town is as benighted as Darkest Africa, and they end up on Hampstead Heath - standing in for the high place where the Devil tempted Christ).
Review of The Detective
