Watch Gideon's Day For Free
Gideon's Day
Scotland Yard Inspector George Gideon starts his day off on the wrong foot when he gets a traffic-violation ticket from a young police officer. From there, his 'typical day" consists in learning that one of his most-trusted detectives has accepted bribes; hunts an escaped maniac who has murdered a girl; tracks a young girl suspected of involvement in a payroll robbery and then helps break up a bank robbery.
Release : | 1958 |
Rating : | 6.6 |
Studio : | Columbia British Productions, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Director of Photography, |
Cast : | Jack Hawkins Anna Lee Anna Massey Andrew Ray Dianne Foster |
Genre : | Drama Action Comedy Crime |
Watch Trailer
Cast List
Related Movies
Reviews
I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Simply Perfect
If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
Have seen this film several times and always enjoy it. Very typical John Ford: easy-going, some high drama, some great on-location color photography, wonderful performances (with quite a bit of Fordian over-acting).There have been some frankly negative reviews of this picture (Leonard Maltin's book gives it just 1 and a half stars!) but don't let that deter you if you just want to be entertained for 90 minutes and transported to London 1958.It's not a thriller, not a who-done-it. It's just John Ford's treatment of a colorful day in the life of a Scotland Yard inspector and his family. If that's something that appeals to you, then by all means sit back and enjoy.
British film-goers were by 1958 entirely used to police films set in London. They were part of a continuum year by year slowly ratcheting up realism and violence - and dropping the humour in the process. "The Blue Lamp" (1950) where a much liked elderly copper (the in-fact almost immortal actor Jack Warner who went on to reprise the role on TV for the following 30 years) is shot and killed by a downright bad 'un (the rather effete Dirk Bogarde), was apparently quite controversial in its day. The public's favoured cup of tea - or at least what was regularly served up to them in police films of the day was not too strong and not without trace of sugar. Bent cops didn't exist then, neither were detectives rough and insensitive with recently (ie 20 minutes earlier) bereaved widows. Rows and shouting were for the lower orders who were either quickly dispersed or shuffled off into separate cells. Jack Hawkins, iconic British actor of the time was heroism and gentlemanliness personified whether captaining a ship or being the sensitive father of a deaf and dumb daughter (the guaranteed weepy "Mandy").British film-goers knew the rules of what to expect of both story and cast when it came to police films and it was nothing like the gritty US productions of the day. With a comparatively very low murder rate and cops who didn't carry guns the real life conditions were very different between the two countries. A British policeman's lot could appear a rather whimsical one by comparison.Somehow John Ford, THE John Ford, comes to direct some of Britain's finest at a British studio in a production set in the streets of London based on a book by an English writer for an audience thoroughly used to a set of confined and unfamiliar conventions. Ford's favourite actor was John Wayne - the personification of plain talking, straight shooting and unrefined acting - rarely wasting a word when a punch will do. Here instead he has perhaps cinema's quintessential portrayer of sensitive masculinity being called on to steam-roller evidence from a widow, confront an underling with evidence confirming he's been on the take from "dope" dealers, solve a couple of slayings - and not forget the running bit of levity - bringing home the fresh salmon for dinner.The result although fast paced and not without its moments - Marjorie Rhodes as a bereaved mother is electrifying - is nevertheless a cultural car-crash. Two very different cinematic cop traditions from either side of the Atlantic - one whimsical, domestic and a little jokey, the other harsh and procedural, each proceeding at a reckless speed towards the other and meeting in the middle of the screen. The result is something which clearly contains a mixture of both but which thereafter proceeds irregularly and uncertainly in various directions like particle tracks in a bubble chamber following a near light speed atomic collision.
Not classic John Ford by any stretch of the imagination but I watched for the first time in years on t.v. this afternoon, and it certainly brightened up a wet afternoon.There are some lovely comic moments such as Andrew Rays young rookie policeman booking Jack Hawkins(Gideon)for speeding then in the final scene getting caught him self with Gideon as a passenger, by then he is son in law material.Miles Mallison as an eccentric judge and John Le Mesurier as a prosecuting council have delicious little cameos, so much so that they might have drifted in from another film set. How I cheered when Jack Watling's timid vicar suddenly floors the toughs in his church who are threatening him, it turns out he is an ex wartime para.Michael Trubshawe plays the typical British police sargeant. Jack Hawkins is of course his usual irrascible but dependable self.What a success rate,three murders solved in one day.Always a pleasure to watch Anna Lee as the long suffering wife who in one scene tells her daughter played by Anna Massey never to marry a policeman,too late her eyes are already set on the young officer.Fortunately they showed the ninety minute colour version not the truncated sixty minute black and white version shown in USA but if one is going to be overly critical the editing is somewhat choppy and I wonder if they wrote the script as they were filming.Neverless the film rattles along and is never boring,there's not a weak link in the cast.If John Ford is not exactly at his peak he's by no means off form.7 out of 10 seems a fair assessment.
The novel 'Gideon's Day' was the first in the Gideon series by John Creasey (written under the pseudonym of J J Marric) and was published in 1955. Each book in the series followed 'G G' (George Gideon) through a period of time. Cases that came up during that time were not necessarily solved by the end of the novel: they were kind of a "slice of life" of (Creasey's image of) 50s Scotland Yard.There are 21 novels in the Gideon series, as written by John Creasey, with the last one published in 1976 (2 years after his death). I did, however, once came across another Gideon novel, written after Creasey's death by another author using the name J J Marric. If you like the Gideon TV series and movie and are interested in the books, make SURE they are by Creasey as anything else is a very poor substitute.