Gideon of Scotland Yard

I movie that I saw on TCM ages ago, quite possibly before I started blogging, is one called Gideon's Day (when first released in the US, it got the title Gideon of Scotland Yard). Recently, I noticed that one of the streaming services had it, and since a search of the site claims I haven't done a full-length review of it here before, I decided to sit down and watch it to do a review here.

Both titles are descriptive, and in some ways, there's not a whole lot of plot to describe. George Gideon (Jack Hawkins) is a Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard. He lives in one of the leafy boroughs of London with his wife Kate (Anna Lee) and adult daughter Sally (Anna Massey), who is studying at the Royal College of Music. One of the many subplots involves Sally, who is supposed to take part in a recital that evening. Kate wants George to return home early so they can dine before the concert, and more importantly to bring home some salmon since some other relatives are going to be over for dinner. George's not having the salmon and the possibility of missing that concert are the running comic-relief plot, although the rest of the movie isn't exactly heavy.

Since it's a running subplot, you can guess that things happen to break up Gideon's day and that he keeps getting called off to different duties. One short example is that he's expected to testify in court as a witness for a criminal trial, and it turns out the barristers only need him for one question to the point that you wonder why he had to break up his day for that. The two darkest parts of the movie involve a detective who has been on the take; Gideon has to approach the man's wife about it and she doesn't want to believe it. There's also an escaped murderer/mental patient who has returned to London from Manchester, and the police desperately want to catch him before he kills again.

These plots are not so much episodic like an anthology movie, although some are resolved fairly early. Instead, it's more like one of those old all-star movies in that the plots mix in and out and at least one character is involved in multiple subplots. On the way to taking his daughter to school, Gideon runs a red light because there's no oncoming traffic. A constable on the beat, PC Barnaby-Green (Andrew Ray) sees this, and pulls Gideon over, showing him no mercy because after all everybody is supposed to obey the law, especially a chief inspector like Gideon. Gideon just somehow has the great good (or bad) luck to keep running into Barnaby-Green throughout his day.

One other crime involves a gang who engage in a comic kidnapping of an executive who has the payroll for a company, then taking the payroll. They then try to break into a bank vault after hours, and their crime breaks up Gideon's adventures at various points. Meanwhile, there's still that salmon Kate wants for dinner....

Gideon's Day is an excellent slice-of-life movie with just the right mix of comedy and drama. I think I've mentioned before that I'm a big fan of Jack Hawkins, an actor who isn't so well remembered on this side of the Atlantic mostly because he didn't do much in the way of Hollywood movies. Hawkins handles both the serious stuff and the light relief with aplomb, while the various crime stories are all done well, with the possible minor quibble that everything has to get wrapped up way to quickly since it's a movie.

Supposedly when the movie was first released in the US, it was edited down and only released in black and white, but both times I've seen it, it's been a color print with the "full" running time of a shade over 90 minutes. It's a winner of a movie, and 90 minutes of fine entertainment.