Gideon of Scotland Yard ( Gideon's Day )

Gideon of Scotland Yard (DVD) (*)

$25.99

Original Title: Gideon's Day
Language Selections:
English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )
Italian ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )
Italian ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
Italy ( PAL/Region 2 )

Running Time:
91 min

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen

Special Features:
Interactive Menu
Scene Access

Movie filmed in 1958 and produced in:
United Kingdom ( Great Britain, Ireland )

Directed By:
John Ford

Written By:
T.E.B. Clarke
John Creasey

Actors:
Jack Hawkins ..... Chief Insp. George Gideon
Anna Lee ..... Mrs. Kate Gideon
Anna Massey ..... Sally Gideon
Andrew Ray ..... P.C. Farnaby Green
Howard Marion-Crawford ..... The Chief
John Loder ..... The Duke
Barry Keegan ..... The Driver
Frank Lawton ..... Liggot
Michael Trubshawe ..... Golightly
Derek Bond ..... Det. Sgt. Eric Kirby
Grizelda Harvey ..... Mrs. Kirby (as Grizelda Hervey)
Henry B. Longhurst ..... The Vicar (as Henry Longhurst)
Doreen Madden ..... His daughter (The Vicar's)
Jack Watling ..... The Curate
Cyril Cusack ..... Herbert 'Birdie' Sparrow
Maureen Potter ..... Mrs. Sparrow
Donal Donnelly ..... Feeney
Dervis Ward ..... Andy 'Simmo' Simpson
Marjorie Rhodes ..... Mrs. Rosie Saparelli
Hermione Bell ..... Dolly Saparelli
Laurence Naismith ..... Arthur Sayer
Charles Maunsell ..... Walker
Miles Malleson ..... The Judge
Dianne Foster ..... Joanna Delafield
Ronald Howard ..... Paul Delafield
Francis Crowdy ..... Frank Fitzhubert
David Aylmer ..... His Assistant (Fitzhubert's)
Brian Smith ..... His Assistant (Fitzhubert)
James Hayter ..... Mason
Michael Shepley ..... Sir Rupert
Joan Ingram ..... Lady Bellamy

Synopsis:

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 of learning that one of his most-trusted detectives has accepted bribes. He hunts an escaped maniac who has murdered a girl. He tracks a young girl suspected of a payroll robbery, and then helps break up a bank robbery. His long day ends when he arrives at home and finds that his daughter has a date with the policeman who gave him a ticket that morning.

T.E.B. Clarke adapted John Creasy's first Gideon novel, Gideon's Day, providing visiting Yank John Ford with an opportunity to make the film. Jack Hawkins shrewdly plays Inspector George Gideon, who is followed throughout the course of a single day, during which he misses dinner and his daughter's onstage celloing but solves or resolves a string of criminal cases into the wee hours. One of Ford's signal accomplishments is the balance his elegant, rambunctious film strikes between the chaos and confusion in which his hero and Scotland Yard cohorts seem to operate and the air of justifiable competence and wit that especially Gideon brings to the practice of police work. Ford, who directed The Informer (1935), shows here another police informant, a weasily though endearing cockney (Cyril Cusack, who gives the film's most wonderful performance), whose life is in jeopardy, occasioning an incisively (rather than messily) thrilling chase. Abetted by cinematographer Frederick A. Young, moreover, Ford conjures voluminous fog that's as haunting and eerily dangerous in color as the earlier film's fog was in black and white.
Anna Massey plays Gideon's daughter, Sally. Early on, Ford's camera lingers as Raymond Massey's lovely daughter and Ford's own godchild walks up steps, outdoors. This is a shot that will captivate men. Later in the film, another teenaged girl is shown walking upstairs indoors, the camera recording her observance by someone who has insinuated himself into her mother's house, a sexual psychotic who will rape and murder her. The earlier shot of Sally implicates us in the sick man's compulsion, stretching thin the line between 'normality' and 'perversion.' How I love John Ford! Meanwhile, Sally's spirit and independence mark a generational change from her mother, Gideon's cheerfully submissive wife. An Irish film, this, despite the London setting.

This product was added to our catalog on Sunday 03 March, 2013.

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