They sat through two hours of ritual, symbol and mystery, along with chunks of sermonising and a bit of mortification thrown in. The film was to some seen as surprisingly reverent. There was almost no sex, the Vatican was portrayed as benign (although not everyone within it) and there was no challenge to the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection. To others, it was nothing more than “glorious tat” — but an improvement on the tattier construction of the book itself.

Predictably, the self-appointed Roman Catholic experts in the field of Da Vinci Code studies were sceptical. Dr Austen Ivereigh, the public affairs director for the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, and spokesman for The Da Vinci Code Response Group, said that the film was never going to be a threat to the Church.

“It was as dull as anything. It was like a long, tedious history lecture in dusty churches by lunatics, occasionally interrupted by the assaults of a pastiche, bloodied monk. I want to be indignant about it, but I can’t. The same objections that we have to the book have to stand against the film.”

Jack Valero, of Opus Dei, the Catholic organisation that is arguably most threatened by the film, said: “It is gruesome to see my brothers and sisters represented in a way that has no relation to reality. And it was incredibly dull.”

But however dull Opus Dei might have found the film, in the cinema last night the majority were gripped.

Click here to read Ruth Gledhill's weblog Articles of Faith

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