I had always wanted to catch this classic British film, but it hasn't been shown in my neck of the woods since the early 1980s! As a matter of fact, some time ago I purchased "The Complete Father Brown" volume - collecting all the stories of the sleuthing cleric by G.K. Chesterton, just because I didn't think I was ever going to watch it! Though the character has been featured in at least one other film (in 1934) and several TV adaptations (one starring Kenneth More and another, made in Italy, directed by Vittorio Cottafavi and featuring Renato Rascel), Hamer's version remains the most substantial outing of Chesterton's creation.
The film itself, featuring a superbly witty script and deft direction, is a thoroughly delightful and occasionally hilarious gem - made by and with several exponents of the famed Ealing style, it's admirably served by a splendid cast. Alec Guinness is at somewhere near his best in the title role (unassuming, accident-prone but uncommonly shrewd and entirely amiable, his influence on future Peter Sellers characterizations - such as the priest in HEAVENS ABOVE! (1963) and Inspector Clouseau - is very evident); Joan Greenwood is somewhat underused here, but she's quite good as an aristocratic widow and Father Brown's confidante; a young Peter Finch impresses as the gentleman thief Flambeau, engaged in a battle-of-wits with Guinness throughout in which the two clearly respect and admire one another - but the rogue is averse to the priest's attempts to redeem him! Other familiar - and welcome - British faces grace the supporting line-up: Bernard Lee as a cop; Sid James as a ne'er-do-well small-time crook; Cecil Parker as Guinness' flustered superior, a bishop; and Ernest Thesiger as a dotty ancient librarian who appears in only one scene, but it turns out to be one of the film's comic highlights. Other memorable moments involve the various disguises Flambeau adopts in his attempts to outwit Guinness, such as in the lengthy catacombs and auction sequences.
Despite Hamer's reputation, this particular film seems to have been somewhat neglected - or, at least, has had its importance downplayed - over the years; in my opinion, along with KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949; undeniably his masterpiece) and IT ALWAYS RAINS ON Sunday (1947; which I only first watched a couple of months back), it stands as the director's finest work. At the time, it was deemed worthy of representing Britain at that year's Venice Film Festival, where it competed against such cinematic heavyweights as Federico Fellini's LA STRADA, Elia Kazan's ON THE WATERFRONT, Akira Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI, Kenji Mizoguchi's SANSHO THE BAILIFF and Luchino Visconti's SENSO - except that Renato Castellani's little-seen version of ROMEO AND JULIET (featuring Laurence Harvey) emerged the overall winner!!
FATHER BROWN was also Robert Hamer's second of four collaborations with star Alec Guinness: I own THE SCAPEGOAT (1959), an interesting film co-starring Bette Davis, on VHS and had watched it many years ago; however, I missed out on TO Paris, WITH LOVE (1954) - which, by all accounts, is a disappointing trifle and easily the least of their films together. A side-note regarding Guinness: according to the IMDb, he actually converted to Roman Catholicism soon after the release of FATHER BROWN!
