The Detective

Although occasionally overdoing the unworldliness, Alec Guinness brings GK Chesterton's sermonising sleuth to rich and vigorous life in this hugely enjoyable comedy thriller from director Robert Hamer, who also made Guinness's classic comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets. Fans of the original stories might be a tad aggrieved by the slight shift of period and the marked reduction in religious undertones, but the case of St Augustine's Cross is nevertheless packed with incident and intrigue. Peter Finch is languidly villainous as the dastardly criminal Flambeau and Joan Greenwood huskily seductive as the devout Lady Warren, but it's Cecil Parker's bishop and Ernest Thesiger's doddering librarian who stay longest in the memory.