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When a baby is snatched from outside a high street pharmacy, the police begin a painstaking search for clues and information whilst also trying to deal with the child's distraught parents.

Green's film is very much of its time, and there's nothing wrong with that – in 1956 Britain we thought nothing of leaving a baby in its pram outside a store. Small shops ran library services, small grocers and bakeries thrived, large supermarkets were a thing of the future and London's parks were awash with uniformed armies of perambulating nannies…

In the lead, Farrar is a little dull but this is perhaps more the fault of the script, which leaves little space for character development. As the baby's parents, Knight and Arnall both struggle with the challenges their parts bring, although certainly the script serves them better than Farrar, exploring the different emotional impacts a lost child can bring with both characters reacting differently. Green is better served by a delightful array of supporting character actors, each of whom savours the few lines they are given. This was a hallmark of British cinema in the 40s, 50s and 60s, where so often the supporting and bit players were much more believable and entertaining than the leads – witness Joan Hickson's amusingly patronising tone with her teenage customers (one of whom is Barbara Windsor!) in the chemist shop, or ice cream seller Joan Sims' hilarious gossiping about keeping her hairdo intact in an open top car. Thora Hird is hysterical as a caustic landlady, disapproving of plain-clothes policewomen, whilst Everley Gregg offers a sublime turn as a 'no nonsense' Viscountess in oily overalls.

All in all an enjoyably episodic story, coloured with fascinating location shooting and wonderful cameos, and a treat for anyone interested in Britain or British cinema in the 1950s.

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.

Well acted and directed, this is a highly enjoyable mystery about the abduction of a baby in Central London. Much of the movie is shot on location giving a fascinating look at the city in the mid fifties. Julia Arnall is outstanding as the distraught mother and one wonders why Rank dropped her contract after one subsequent film. Future stars Shirley Anne Field, Barbara Windsor and Joan Sims all have bits while there are cameos from stalwarts like Thora Hird, Marjorie Rhodes, Joan Hickson, Everley Gregg and a lovely supporting performance from Eleanor Summerfield as a policewoman.

In Britain, as in America, there seemed to be an unwritten convention in the fifties that certain film genres were more suited to colour and others to black-and-white, and crime dramas fell firmly into the latter category. This was true both of films directly influenced by the American film noir tradition, such as "The Man Between", "The Long Memory" and "Tread Softly Stranger", and of other British crime dramas of the era such as "The Blue Lamp","Town on Trial" and "Stage Fright", Hitchcock's only British film of the decade. "Lost", however, is one of the exceptions, being made in vivid Technicolor, possibly because it is not primarily a film noir or a suspense thriller but a police procedural.

Simon, the infant son of Lee Cochrane, an American diplomat, and his Austrian-born fashion designer wife Sue, is kidnapped when his nanny leaves him in his pram outside a London shop. (Younger people may find this hard to believe, but in the fifties and sixties it was common practice for mothers and others having charge of young children to leave them outside in their prams while they were shopping). Detective Inspector Craig of Scotland Yard is charged with investigating the crime.

With his aquiline features, David Farrar would have made an excellent Sherlock Holmes, and he plays the patient, methodical, unemotional Craig very much as a detective of the Holmes school. He is a far cry from the rough, tough, Dirty Harry types we have become used to ever since the sixties. His method of solving the crime is to examine all the discarded items- a button from an expensive coat, a paper bag from a baker's shop in Slough, a torn page from a library book- which he finds in the vicinity of Simon's pram in Hyde Park and to trace them back to their source with the help of the Yard's forensic department. His colleagues- and Simon's distraught parents- are sceptical about this methodology, but Craig is vindicated when one of these objects does indeed prove to be the vital clue.

The other cast member who stand out is the lovely Julia Arnall as Sue. Julia (who like her character was Austrian by birth) was one of the most beautiful actresses the British film industry during this period, with the looks of another Grace Kelly, but never seemed to become a major star. In Britain, as in Hollywood, looks alone have never been a cast- iron guarantee of stardom.

I said earlier that this is not primarily a suspense thriller, but the final scene, a literal cliffhanger set on Beachy Head near Eastbourne, is clearly influenced by Hitchcock. (Similarly, "Town on Trial" also has a very Hitchcockian finale, in that case set on a church steeple). It is not, however, a film which one would watch today for thrills. If one watches it at all- and I can appreciate that to some modern film fans it would seem very slow and dated- it is for its historic interest as an example of an old-fashioned type of crime drama and as a nostalgic view of the now-vanished Britain of the fifties. 6/10

A goof. Craig states that an abduction can only legally be called a "kidnapping" when it is followed by a demand for money with menaces. This is not true today and was not true in 1956. In English common law, kidnapping is the unlawful taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, whether or not a demand for money with menaces is made. The making of such a demand constitutes the separate offence of blackmail.

I have seen this film a number of times on television. I find it quite pleasant and nostalgic as I was a young boy in the UK in the 50's and the images bring back so many pleasant memories. It is good to see so many actors in supporting roles who went on to become major stars in the UK like Barbara Windsor and Thora Hird, and a host of other well known British characters.

It is a typical British 50's film and is well made and well acted, although albeit quite stiff upper lipped and somewhat wooden, especially from the leading actors like the child's mother. In fairness to her the lines that were given to her were pretty weak, and it is a shame that her movie career did not go as well as it could of - she was certainly a quite stunning girl.