Rent Father Brown (1954)

Hell Having To Endure This. - Father Brown review by NC

Alec Guinness as Father Brown - sounds as if at the very least it could be a passable way to waste the time? Don't bother, because this is spiritless fare.

The first half has a sub-Ealing feel to it, as Father Brown is introduced to us as an exasperating thorn in the side of the bishop (Cecil Parker) because of his unorthodox way of doing the right thing. The second part is more sober, with light touches, as Father Brown and master thief Flambeau (Peter Finch) play their cat-and-mouse games.

The main problem is that impossibilities pile on impossibilities until any dramatic intention the film may have had vanishes like incense smoke, leaving only the frivolity - and as the film clearly intends to be more than that, the whole enterprise is a failiure.

At the very start Father Brown is arrested, caught red-handed by a safe that has been cracked open. He says he is putting the booty back in, having persuaded the real crook to repent his sinful ways. The police hardly believe him. Yet when they find out he really is a clergyman they let him go without further question. Why? When plain-clothes policemen, following Father Brown and Flambeau in Paris, need to chase a bus the two have boarded, they first of all fail to commandeer a taxi because a canoodling couple are on the back seat; then flag down a black maria (with bells clanging!). For some reason the driver stops and lets two strangers climb in the back, (the doors are open!!), letting them out where they want. The black maria, bells still clanging, must have been going slower than the bus. The prisoners in the back, instead of getting out when it stops and the doors are open, wave the two policemen off and shut the doors on themselves!!! The same two hapless policemen, again following Father Brown, run out of fuel only yards from a garage! Father Brown beats them to it by a minute or two and informs the attendant that he is being chased by two criminals. When the policemen push the car to the garage, the attendant refuses to help them. Instead of enforcing him to help them in the name of the law, or even putting fuel in the car themselves, they let the man take off in his own vehicle, (with Father Brown in the back), and decide the best way of pursuit is to walk!! Perhaps the silliest impossibility is left until the final scene. I guess it would be called a spoiler if I divulged what happens, but how can this mess be spoiled?

An impressive cast look unhappy (Bernard Lee particularly) at having to mouth inanities. Guinness fails to show a smidgen of his renowned quality.

I confess to disliking G.K. Chesterton. His snooty and didactic attitude seem typical of his time and his sort. Perhaps because of this the Father Brown stories cannot really be ever successfully adapted. The series with Kenneth More soon grew stale, and the actor appeared to get bored with the role quite quickly. The less said about the later series with Mark Williams the better.

It is said Guinness converted to Catholicism shortly after making this film. "Mysterious ways" and all that, I suppose. No doubt he thought he would attain Paradise one day. Personally speaking, watching this unholy rubbish I thought my time had come and I'd gone to the other place.