The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane called The Fallen Idol “the most tightly drawn of all” the collaborations between writer Graham Greene and director Carol Reed. Lane writes, “Ralph Richardson plays Baines, the butler at a foreign embassy in London. The ambassador has gone away, leaving his young son, Philippe (Bobby Henrey), in the care of Baines and the hectoring Mrs. Baines (Sonia Dresdel). The plot, deft and quick, is rich in secrets. . . . As a study of the child who sees but cannot fully understand, the movie reaches back to Henry James’s What Maisie Knew, and as an introduction to the clammy grip of Greene it remains unsurpassed.”