Writer: Roger MacDougall
Director: Basil Dearden
There has been a mini revival of Dirk Bogarde films in the last year with the re-release of The Servant. Now a rather surprising return for The Gentle Gunman, the 1952 film set during the Second World War that comes with a health warning about historic vocabulary and attitudes which in this case translates as ‘will offend Irish people’. An IRA story about sacrifice and leadership, the message about choosing the war effort over domestic battles has not aged well.
When a terrorist incident goes wrong on the London Underground, IRA member Matt Sullivan flees to Ireland while his colleagues are rounded up by the police. There, with further acts planned, Matt is torn between the organisation leader’s desire to press on and his own brother Terrance’s insistence on a different direction. With pressure from other family members and the police closing in, will Matt choose violence over freedom?
Basil Dearden’s film was a bit of a period piece even when it was made and while there is an enjoyable noirish-quality to the visuals, the meandering plot about various planned attacks and the leadership challenge within the IRA never proves quite as explosive or engaging as it hopes to be. Even the hero’s dramatic dilemma, torn between the opposing camps, fails to deliver any particular tension or, in reality, much screen time.
At the heart of the film is an age-old debate about the most appropriate tactics for progress and, like many political groups before them, whether to employ violence or peaceable means is The Gentle Gunman’s primary concern. Yet, couching this in anti-Allied language of the Second World War and making the IRA’s campaign anti-Patriotic has dated extremely badly, particularly placing these views within an organisation where leading members of the “Irish” cast are played by British actors which now feels crass at best.
And then, of course, there are the accents; West Hampstead-born Dirk Bogarde and Norfolk-born John Mills producing variable to non-existent Irish brogues while surrounded by a mixed cast of performers. Bogarde never seems to get out of the starting blocks as the youngster grappling with supposed heroism and family while Mills is impossibly bland as the radical with a heart who tries to save them all from themselves despite the unlikely revolutionary fervour of their shared love interest Maureen and her mother Molly.
At 80-minutes The Gentle Gunman is an easy enough watch and there is some tension in the well-staged London scenes at the beginning as a bomb is planted at Camden Road Station during the Blitz. But the pace and credibility stretches rather thin when the whole thing decamps to Ireland and the drama fails to detonate.
The Gentle Gunman is released on DVD, Blu-Ray and Digital on 7th March.
