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18th September 2001
Top Scottish films 1 - 10
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Rob
Roy: Hollywood money and an Irish star combined to produce
a "Scottish" hit
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11 Shallow Grave (1995: Danny Boyle)
Three young professionals rent out their spare room to a new flatmate,
who promptly dies, leaving a suitcase of money behind. The trio
decide to keep it and dispose of the body, though they soon find
themselves in violent conflict with the dead man’s associates
and each other. A fast and incredibly assured thriller, Shallow
Grave kick-started the Scottish film industry and turned producer
Andrew Macdonald, writer John Hodge and director Danny Boyle (the
only non-Scot) into a major force. It also gave Ewan McGregor
his first big break, but only after Robert Carlyle turned it down.
Carlyle believed journalist Alex should be working-class, because
the middle classes did not need to kill for money. But the film,
made at the tail-end of Tory rule, captured perfectly the legacy
of Thatcherism and the prevalent middle-class creed of always
wanting more.
Read The Wolf's review
of Shallow Grave
12 The Brothers (1947: David MacDonald)
A neglected minor masterpiece, The Brothers is a searing melodrama
of good and evil, innocence and corruption, with a Scottish director
and a largely Scottish cast. Patricia Roc plays an orphan from
Glasgow who, in 1900, becomes the servant of a Skye crofter (Finlay
Currie) and his sons (Duncan Macrae and Maxwell Reid), in a community
where transgressors are sent bobbing out into the ocean, tied
up with floats and a fish on their head, which will attract a
seabird to dive from great height and pierce fish and skull together.
This is a dark brew, with its macabre violence and raw sexual
passion. Shot in ghostly greys, The Brothers uses its backdrop
of sea and mountains to telling effect, building to a powerful
climax.
13 Tunes of Glory (1960: Ronald Neame)
Alec Guinness appeared in The Bridge on the River Kwai, Star Wars
and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, but thought this compelling
character drama was probably his best work. He was offered the
role of the suave, Oxford-educated Colonel Barrow, but persuaded
director Ronald Neame to let him play against type as Barrow’s
nemesis Colonel Sinclair. Not everyone was convinced by his performance
as the aggressive Glaswegian, who has been promoted from the ranks
and then passed over. But Guinness was almost certainly drawing
on memories of his stepfather, a Scottish officer who menaced
him with a pistol and held him upside down from a bridge.
14 Rob Roy (1995: Michael Caton-Jones)
The famous outlaw had been the subject of several previous films,
including Disney’s Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue, a title which
made him sound one step removed from a naughty schoolboy. The
1995 film was conceived, produced, written and directed by Scots,
though the money came from Hollywood and the star, Liam Neeson,
from Ireland. It has all the requisite action, and is strong on
characterisation too, treating its subject with intelligence and
respect. Writer Alan Sharp brought with him some of the qualities
that inform his westerns, including a feel for landscape. In the
end Rob overdoes the lectures on honour, but Caton-Jones makes
excellent use of West Highland locations; Tim Roth is a wonderful
villain - dandified and powdered, yet deadly, and ultimately tragic;
and Roth and Neeson produce possibly the best sword fight ever
seen on film.
Read The Wolf's review of Rob
Roy
15 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969: Ronald Neame)
It is only right that this portrait of Edinburgh, in all its unashamed
middle-class glory, should be included in any list of the creme
de la creme of Scottish films, alongside films about proletarian
Glaswegians and romantic Highlanders. Miss Brodie sees herself
as a beacon of culture in the stuffy traditional school where
she teaches, instilling in her girls an appreciation not just
of Italian artists, but of Italian fascism. She is in her own
way as narrow-minded and snobbish as anyone at the Marcia Blaine
School for Girls, and much more dangerous. Maggie Smith won an
Oscar for her performance, and Rod McKuen’s theme tune remains
a dry-throated classic, but the film owes much to its Edinburgh
locations, the spirit of which it captures perfectly.
16 Breaking the Waves (1996: Lars von Trier)
It was the film that divided Scotland’s chattering classes five
years ago, some acclaiming it a classic and others walking out
in disgust. Emily Watson plays a child-like, young woman who lives
in a remote village, talks directly to God and marries a foreign
oil rig worker. Paralysed in a workplace accident, he asks her
to have sex with strangers and describe the encounters. >From
its opening scenes of grey-bearded church elders, the film captures
the oppressiveness of an introspective and strict Presbyterian
community, though it was written and directed by the Dane Lars
von Trier and was not originally set in Scotland. Von Trier went
on to initiate the Dogme back-to-basics movement, elements of
which can be seen in the grainy texture of the film and jerky
camerawork that made some viewers seasick.
17 Culloden (1964: Peter Watkins)
Made for television, but subsequently shown in film theatres,
Watkins’s mock-documentary offers an antidote to the romanticised
version of the Jacobite Rising promoted by Hollywood movies, and
our own fiction, songs and tourist industry. It was made long
before This is Spinal Tap and the fashion for mock-documentaries
as comedy. And, although the device of having a modern television
crew in an 18th Century battle, complete with posh BBC interviewer,
may now appear Pythonesque, Watkins is in deadly earnest, highlighting
the confusion and misery of the foot soldiers and the incompetence
and cowardice of their leaders. Battle scenes were close-ups by
necessity, for Watkins could afford only 25 redcoat uniforms.
18 Small Faces (1995: Gillies MacKinnon)
Brothers Gillies and Billy MacKinnon drew on their own experiences
for this story of three brothers growing up on the mean streets
of Glasgow in the Sixties. The eldest is in a gang, the middle
one wants to go to art school and the youngest is torn between
creative and destructive urges. Gillies MacKinnon is equally assured
with camera and actors. The film contributed to the mini-boom
in Scottish film-making in the second half of the Nineties and
significantly increased the pool of new, young acting talent.
Kevin McKidd was hired for Trainspotting after Danny Boyle saw
the rushes for Small Faces and Laura Fraser quit drama school
to pursue her career in films.
19 Mrs Brown (1997: John Madden)
Billy Connolly was Queen Victoria’s bit of Scottish rough in this
film that started life as a BBC Scotland television drama. Then
Miramax came on board and turned it into an Oscar contender. The
original idea was developed by Billy Connolly and producer Douglas
Rae while working on The Bigger Picture, a series on Scottish
art. Connolly is John Brown, the straight-talking Queen’s Highland
ghillie. At one time he thought Bob Hoskins might make a good
Victoria, though it is now impossible to imagine anyone other
than Judi Dench. Victoria sank into deep depression after the
death of her husband, Albert, before finding solace with Brown.
Their apparently chaste, "odd couple" relationship is strangely
poignant.
Read The Wolf's review of
Mrs Brown
20 Orphans (1998: Peter Mullan)
It is one of the great moments of Scottish cinema - Gary Lewis
staggering through a cemetery with a coffin on his back, refusing
offers of help, with the line "She ain’t heavy, she’s my mother."
Peter Mullan had been making shorts and acting in supporting roles
for years, before getting the chance to write and direct a feature.
The result was a bitter-sweet mix of tragedy and the darkest comedy,
as four grown-up children try to come to terms with their loss.
Channel 4 put up most of the money, but could not understand the
end result and decided not to distribute it. Then Mullan won the
best actor award at Cannes, for My Name is Joe, everyone wanted
a part of him and an alternative distributor was found.
Read The Wolf's review of Orphans
Go back to Brian Pendreigh's top 10 Scottish
films
18th September:
Top 20 Scottish Films Never
August 1999: Richard
Mowe, curator of film at the Royal Museum of Scotland, selects
the Scottish films of the 20th Century
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