Wonderfully offbeat film!

Great Film overall

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Lost is a decent little British film that pretty much covers all bases regarding the search for a kidnapped baby. David Knight and Julia Arnall are the American couple whose baby is snatched from under the nose of their nanny when she parks his pram outside a chemists shop in London. A frantic search ensues, led by the reassuringly gruff Detective Inspector played by David Farrar, who has to wade through a mass of red herrings before his dogged investigation finally leads him to the culprit.Lost is a rare example of a mid-fifties British drama filmed in colour, and its most fascinating aspect is the location shots of familiar London streets populated by people either now long-gone or in the sunset of their lives. The story is quite absorbing, although a little uneven, and everything is much more polite than it would be today. Having said that, the story's subject matter is probably more relevant today than it was when the film was made, and it wouldn't take much tweaking to be brought up to date and slotted into an ITV Sunday night drama schedule.A few familiar faces make unexpected appearances: one of the girls in the chemist shop is an 18-year-old Barbara Windsor, and the flirtatious seller of ice creams in Kensington Park is her Carry On co-star, Joan Sims. Mona Washbourne, Dandy Nichols, Thora Hird, Joan Hickson, Percy Herbert and Shirley-Anne Field are also in there somewhere, largely in blink and you'll miss them roles.

While Lee and Sue Cochrane are out at work, their nanny is out in the park with their baby, Simon. Leaving his pram outside a shop when she pops in to buy some supplies, the nanny is horrified to leave the shop and find the pram missing. The police are immediately alerted and Detective Inspector Craig is put on the case – picking up what few leads there are and willing to consider even the thinnest of clues. Meanwhile Lee and Sue cannot contain themselves and set out to try and find Simon themselves, also following any sliver of information that comes from any source.At the time this subject a child stolen away in a public place) must have seemed like the worst nightmare but also unrealistic enough to provide some security. Nowadays the subject is all too common and very publicly reported – this makes the film a lot more relevant but also a lot less realistic since we know that this is not how these investigations go and, sadly, a lot of the most public cases end up with the child being found dead and abused rather than saved. This film opens with an oh-so-dated society of nannies with prams, green parks and married couples in single beds (where did Simon come from? Or was it just that once?) but launches straight into the tension with Simon being taken. The general air of tension is kept up but the plot doesn't do enough to help it by mixing it up with a light air and having a few too many red herrings without providing a satisfying narrative drive.Maybe I'm being picky but the calm air of the police and public was a bit unconvincing and it made it harder to believe that they would calmly pick through bins looking for clues as their first course of action. Of course I know this is what they would do in the situation (or crawl across the area on hands and knees) but the air of calm was a real turn off. The hysteria of the parents is fine but the Nancy Drew investigation they go off on is silly and wastes the chance to really get to grips with the myriad of emotions that parents must feel in this situation. I would have preferred the film to have the police get into a tense race against time while the parents struggled with helplessness, guilt, anger, pain and turning on one another – that would have been more interesting that having them really involved in the case, the parents on the news over the past few years seem far too shell-shocked to do anything like running round the woods!The cast are average, mostly being far too wooden and unemotional. Farrar is a strong chinned lead but no more than that at any time; he and Knight have a bit of a p*ssing contest to see who can puff their chest out the furthest and be the most 'manly', but it only makes for unconvincing roles for the audience. Arnall is OK considering it was her first screen role, and she draws the emotion out well – if only she had been given more time to does this as a focus and not an aside. In the support cast is a surprisingly amount of famous British faces looking all a bit young – an unmistakable Barbara Winsor, Joan Sims and Thora Hird are the main ones but quite a few bit players are wheeled out to provide red herrings – in fact I wonder if the fact that they were well-known could have been deliberate to make the audience think they were bigger parts of the mystery?Overall this is an OK thriller but the stiff upper lip and rather calm approach takes away from the tension it should have had. The story is a bit weak and unconvincing and doesn't really deliver the goods in terms of the overall narrative and the development of characters and emotions but it does the job well enough for a rather dated piece of entertainment. Worth seeing if it's a dull Saturday afternoon.

This film really is as good as people say. It's worth watching for the locations, the photography and that gallery of British stars. As soon as I saw Joan Hickson chatting to Barbara Windsor about lipstick shades I was hooked. The script is often funny, despite the harrowing subject matter (every parent's nightmare), but I can't help feeling it would have been much better directed if made 10years earlier. Films of the 40s had a comic snap that the 50s lost. In fact, it sometimes looks like a 40s script made in the 50s. It's just that opportunities for comedy are lost. A film with this structure is picaresque - it's an excuse to get your foot in the door and nose around other people's front rooms and meet a lot of people you wouldn't otherwise. More could have been made of theencounters with Thora Hird ("Take the door with you, dear, as far as it will go.") and the fat lady in the newsagents who blames the Russians. Why theRussians? "Well, if we knew that we'd know everything." The boy on the bikecould have been more of a character. And the girl at the garage (gas station to you) is just a Rank starlet with her painfully refined accent and crisp summer dress (for dispensing petrol?). Some of the best bits are back at the policestation with the excellent David Farrar and the sergeants who have to read apile of trashy novels as part of the investigation. Well worth a look.

Filmed in color, this film, which is concerned with the hunt for a baby snatched from its pram in a London street, is replete with well-known British character actors of the 1950's including Joan Sims, Eleanor Summerfield, Joan Hickson, Thora Hird and Marjorie Rhodes. It represents a marvelous look at London and its people as they were in the 1950's and is sure to evoke many memories for those who lived there at that time. Highly recommended.