Gideon of Scotland Yard

Gideon of Scotland Yard (aka Gideon's Day, John Ford, 1958) You think you know a guy. Take John Ford. I couldn't have been more surprised to see Ford listed as an executive producer (along with King Kong producer Merian C. Cooper) on that mixture of cowboys and "Kong" stop-motion/live action hybrid, Mighty Joe Young (with effects work done by King Kong magician Willis O'Brien and a young apprentice by the name of Ray Harryhausen). It featured Ben Johnson, one of Ford's stock company, so I shouldn't have been too surprised.

But, years after being escorted off Mister Roberts and making his masterpiece The Searchers, there is this curiosity that Ford produced and directed in Britain, far afield from his westerns and military dramas. Soon after making The Bridge on the River Kwai (and starring in Ford pal Howard Hawks' Land of the Pharoahs), Jack Hawkins was picked by Ford to play Scotland Yard sleuth George Gideon from John Creasey's series of novels starting with his "Gideon's Day," written in 1955.

Now, Gideon is a Detective Chief Inspector and with that goes a lot of responsibility. But, that doesn't mean that you're immune from the vagaries of life, like getting enough time in the bathroom in the morning, or parking tickets from too-earnest young bobbies, family matters like making it home in time to attend your daughter's concert—her first (she's played by Anna Massey...and it was her first...film), or acquiring the salmon for the dinner you have to have with the in-law's...if you're not held up at the office by the demands of the job.

For Gideon, on this day of days, has to deal with the possible bribery charges of one of his sergeants—and that will mean personally interviewing the informant (if he can find him), the escape of a violent sex maniac rumored to be on the road to London, not to mention a couple attempted murders, bankroll robberies by a dinner-jacketed mob...and that bobby, who pops in Gideon's Day like the proverbial bad penny.

The film is an oddity, but only because it should be more well-known, as Ford, the picture-maker is working on high-gear here...with some sterling talent in the British film industry: T. E. B. Clarke (The Lavender Hill Mob) wrote the screenplay, premier art director Ken Adam designed the look, and it was photographed by master cinematographer Freddie Young. With such talent behind the scenes, the film would at least be a curiosity, but it's directed by Jack Ford, which warrants a must-see for those who "like them the way they used to make them," or need to be convinced that Ford could do more than westerns...or work with John Wayne.

Those who know Ford's work know that there is a constant struggle for the appropriate tone: Ford, especially in his later years, was fearlessly tackling darker material—making him somewhat unpopular with his studio's—while balancing it with comedy, whether it's the popping of societal balloons or muddying stuffed shirts, or merely exposing the follies of the needlessly pretentious. Characters are in constant danger of barking "Lighten up!" both to their on-screen film-peers but also to the film at large. 

Given the material, Clarke's script provides Ford an almost seamless balancing act between familial follies and often deadly serious police work, showing the pressures of maintaining a civil head while dealing with the lowest of criminal creeps. Yes, the family stuff can be a bit frothy—Anna Lee (mentioned here two days in a row!) plays Gideon's wife, hailing as she does from the county of Kent—but contrast it with the escaped rapist, which Ford films in a way eerily similar to Hitchcock's sense of dread.

Also, unusual for Ford, is a little narrative side-track of what makes a man. Now, this was something he might not have been able to try in his American Westerns...and certainly not around his apprentice, Wayne. When a vicar of a local parish is jeered by the local children for being "a sissy," he stoically turns the other cheek, refusing to talk about his commando service in order to not glorify war, but when he is attacked by a criminal, he does what he has to do to stop the violence. Both he and Gideon are appalled by violence—one preaches against it and one tries to prevent it—they face and take action when confronted by it, but, in their separate ways, avoid resorting to it.

It's a good film, by a master film-maker, but try to see it in color—that's the more complete British version. The U.S. version is in black and white.

Oh, one other thing: at the time Ford was in London filming Gideon's Day, he had the opportunity to meet one of his biggest fans, a Japanese director named Akira Kurosawa.