The first of Greene’s three collaborations with director Carol Reed, The Fallen Idol is arguably the greatest screen adaptation of his work, thanks to key changes and sharp additions that deepen the original short story’s themes of betrayal and guilt, original or not, while giving more presence to its child hero and his first-hand but limited perception of the adult world. Reed also crucially reinvented Greene’s story by making the tow-headed innocent a diplomat’s son left alone in the floating world of a London embassy for a fateful weekend, in the care of his beloved butler friend whose poisonous marriage to his housekeeper wife is being strained to a dangerous breaking point. Children’s stories resound across post-WWII British cinema, partially as an allegory for lost intra-generational innocence but also as a prism for questioning social mores.