Secuestrado en Londres

'Lost' is rather like one of those old 1950s public information films - the acting and dialogue are crisp and stylised, real emotion is kept in check, and the boys in blue will always uncover your man (or woman). Brilliant use is made of UK locations (mainly in London), and the slice of life in 1955 is fascinating. Technicolor is also superb, and the whole thing looks great. It's dated sure - sometimes hilariously so - but then it is half a century old, and anyway that's half its charm. Red herrings litter the plot, and the clifftop climax is suitably atmospheric. Look out for a very youthful Thora Hird and Joan Sims. Recommended.

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 10

years 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 the

encounters 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 the

Russians? "Well, if we knew that we'd know everything." The boy on the bike

could 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 police

station with the excellent David Farrar and the sergeants who have to read a

pile of trashy novels as part of the investigation. Well worth a look.

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.

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.