The Gentle Gunman

United Kingdom

1952

86 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

English

Currently 3.0/5 Stars.
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PROD Michael Relph, Basil Dean

CAST John Mills, Dirk Bogarde, Robert Beatty, Elizabeth Sellars, Barbara Mullen, Eddie Byrne, Joseph Tomelty, Gilbert Harding, James Kenney, Liam Redmond, Jack MacGowran, Michael Golden

The Gentle Gunman was directed by Basil Dearden, and adapted by Roger Macdougall from his own play about the activities of a group of IRA men in London in 1941. The theme is the issue of violence as a means of achieving an ideal. Somehow the events of the more recent past make it difficult to be truly objective about the film. Its attitudes appear to be far too glib and unconvincingly examined to represent any profound statement on the Irish situation. Although the action scenes have a certain excitement, much of the film is stagey and plodding.

The naivety of the overall message, is based upon John Mills weariness of the constant violence. He begins to preach a philosophy of peaceful persuasion, and refuses direct orders to blow up a London railway station. The gunman’s impatient brother find his sibling’s new approach to be counterproductive to the movement. The rest of the IRA agrees, and soon the gentle gunman is branded a traitor and a price is placed on his head. can be persuaded to give up their violent calling if something decent enough happens, is but one of the many artificial touches that compound the failure of the film. —Britmovie.co.uk

Director

Basil Dearden

Basil Dearden (born Basil Clive Dear; 1 January 1911 – 23 March 1971) was an English film director.

Dearden was born at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. He graduated from theatre direction to film, working as an assistant to Basil Dean. He later changed his own name to Dearden to avoid confusion with his mentor.

He first began working as a director at Ealing Studios, co-directing comedy films with Will Hay, including The Goose Steps Out (1942) and My Learned Friend (1943). He worked on the influential chiller compendium Dead of Night (1945) and directed the linking narrative and the “Hearse Driver” segment. He also directed The Captive Heart starring Michael Redgrave, a 1946 British war drama, produced by Ealing Studios. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. The Blue Lamp (1950), probably the most frequently shown of Dearden’s Ealing films, is a police drama which first introduced audiences to PC George Dixon, later resurrected for the long-running Dixon of… read more

Basil Dearden (born Basil Clive Dear; 1 January 1911 – 23 March 1971) was an English film director.

Dearden was born at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. He graduated from theatre direction to film, working as an assistant to Basil Dean. He later changed his own name to Dearden to avoid confusion with his mentor.

He first began working as a director at Ealing Studios, co-directing comedy films with Will Hay, including The Goose Steps Out (1942) and My Learned Friend (1943). He worked on the influential chiller compendium Dead of Night (1945) and directed the linking narrative and the “Hearse Driver” segment. He also directed The Captive Heart starring Michael Redgrave, a 1946 British war drama, produced by Ealing Studios. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. The Blue Lamp (1950), probably the most frequently shown of Dearden’s Ealing films, is a police drama which first introduced audiences to PC George Dixon, later resurrected for the long-running Dixon of Dock Green television series. His last Ealing film, Out of the Clouds, was released in 1955.

In later years he became associated with the writer and producer Michael Relph, and the two men made films on subjects generally not tackled by British cinema in this era. These included homosexuality (Victim, 1961) and race relations (Pool of London, 1951; Sapphire, 1959). In the late 1960s Dearden also made some big-scale epics including Khartoum (1966), with Charlton Heston, and the Victorian era black comedy The Assassination Bureau (1969), again with Michael Relph.

His last film was The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) with Roger Moore, with whom he later made three episodes of the television series The Persuaders!: Overture, Powerswitch and To the Death, Baby. Dearden was killed in a car accident in 1971, in a horrific crash on the M40 near the spot where the character Harold Pelham – the Man Who Haunted Himself – is supposed to have crashed his car in the opening sequence of the film.

He had two sons, Torquil Dearden and the screenwriter and director James Dearden.

The film critic David Thomson does not hold Dearden in high regard. He writes: “[Dearden’s] films are decent, empty, and plodding and his association with Michael Relph is a fair representative of the British preference for bureaucratic cinema. It stands for the underlining of obvious meaning”.

More positively, for the Australian film writer, Brian McFarlane: “Dearden’s films offer, among other rewards, a fascinating barometer of public taste at its most nearly consensual over three decades.” —Wikipedia

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