The Detective (1954)

Alec Guinness plays Father Ignatius Brown, priest and amateur sleuth. When Brown learns that the church plans to send a cross of St. Augustine are in danger from a renowned thief named Flambeau, he opts to deliver the cross himself, expecting to draw out and reach the soul of the thief.

Well, he succeeds in meeting Flambeau, letting the guy take him into a corner of those catacombs beneath Paris, but loses the cross. Which gets him in hot water with both his bosses and the cops, since he deliberately ditched them to speak with Flambeau alone. So now Brown has to find Flambeau again.

It's not exactly a comedy. Brown is extremely near-sighted, but the movie only uses that once for a gag involving a very large, very heavy book. The movie gets some mileage out of the reactions people have to a priest using judo flips and arm locks. But Guinness plays Brown as calm, quiet and collected. He doesn't get flustered or anxious, even when he's trying to stay ahead of the police.

But it's not a tense movie, either. Brown isn't bothered by the loss of the cross so much as he couldn't reach the man who took it. But Flambeau is a sort of gentleman thief, so Brown's never in any danger from pursuing this guy, even when he convinces a society friend to put a rare chess set up for auction to lure out the thief. And the theft of the chess set is played as a sort of game, Brown trying to decide which shady character is the thief in disguise, but he spends the auction sitting in a chair, letting the suspects come to him.

The movie revolves around Brown trying to understand Flambeau across a series of conversations, hoping to get the guy to change his ways, or repent. Though Brown still dominates those conversations, running into monologues after Flambeau a single sentence. I don't find Brown's arguments convincing, revolving around scripture as they do, but I appreciate the fact he's focused enough on saving souls to shield Flambeau from the cops when they track him all the way to the thief's door.