Der Meisterdieb von Paris

Robert Hamer's next film after 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' was this super-stylish precursor to the same director's 'Father Brown' five years later; which feels like an adaptation of a novel but was actually an original screenplay. Continuing his fascination with criminality and deception while studying the bond that develops between a gentleman thief and a detective against a French backdrop, in his tragically sparce career before he drank himself to death aged just 52 he also made two other films with French settings, one of them even called 'To Paris with Love'. It also anticipates 'The Dirty Dozen' and numerous other war films in it's proposition that criminals constitute a valuable resource in wartime.

In answer to an earlier correspondent, Guy Rolfe's career never really took off because health problems made him difficult to work with; although he fortunately enjoyed a late career resurgence in the 'Puppetmaster' series.