Lost

Very underrated, little seen film. Interesting for the extensive location filming and of course all the period cars, clothing etc. All the better for the high quality colour film used. Julia Arnall is beautiful and so 'of her time'. Shame she didn't do many other films and is virtually unknown today. The story is of course very dated now but this doesn't detract from the overall enjoyment. In fact the film is now best viewed as a rare colour historical record of Britain in the mid. 50's. A DVD copy would be excellent for producing 'stills', especially if interested in classic cars or period fashions, even pictures of the lovely Ms. Arnall! I will be recording this film the next time it's on. Recommended.

The plot is centered around a young baby being kidnapped and the parents David Knight and Julia Arnall plus Detective David Farrar's efforts to find the missing infant. Knight is the token American that seemed to be the staple of any British film of that time, you just gotta have a Yank in this Rank. Julia Arnall is a stunner; a German model signed by Rank but unfortunately not the best of actresses her contract didn't last long. A shame because with her looks she was almost in the Grace Kelly class. The tension builds nicely and there is a virtual parade of character actors and actresses that appeared in so many British films of the period. I was a boy of 11 when this film was made and it adds to the enjoyment to see cars, trucks and buses of that time in colour instead of the usual black and white.

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.

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.

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.