WHISKY GALORE (1949)
Directed by Alexander Mckendrick
Ealing Studios, 82 minutes, Not-rated
★★★★
Ealing Studios is a legendary movie production facility on the outskirts of London. In the 1940s and 1950s it was renowned for cranking out comedies, several of which are considered groundbreaking in Britain. Whisky Galore was an early effort and, if you can work out the Scots dialect and have no problem with some good-natured stereotyping, remains a delightful way to while away a short part of an evening.
It was directed by Alexander Mackendrick and its script was penned by Compton Mackenzie, based on his 1947 novelization of an actual event. (Mackenzie also got a minor role in the film.) In real life, the S. S. Politician ran aground near the Scottish islands of Eriskay and Barra in 1941, laden with 21,000 cases of whisky. Islanders plundered the ship and 19 got short jail sentences for avoiding excise taxes. (Most got off, ahem, scot-free.) If that’s not the setup for a comedy, I don’t what is!
The islands were renamed Great and Little Todday for the film, and most of the filming was done during miserable weather on Barra. You’ll hear snippets of Scots Gaelic; Barra is indeed a place where Gaelic is spoken alongside English. The movie boat is rechristened the S. S. Cabinet Minister and its cargo upgraded to 55,000 cases of uisge beatha (literally water of life, aka/whisky). Good comedies take liberties and this one is no exception. As we tune in, islanders are mired in deep depression. It’s 1943 and, horror of horrors, the whisky has run out, rationing is in place, and no shipments are looming on the horizon. Until, of course, a fortuitous shipwreck makes relief but a salvage effort away.
Several problems loom, though. First, just as the villagers prepare to sail in the near-daylight conditions of a northern summer, the clock strikes midnight and they turn back. It’s one thing to steal cargo, but it would be a mortal sin to blow off mass and do so on the Sabbath! Oh! the disconsolate faces. Second, Britain had something called the Home Guard during the war, basically a citizen militia headed by older veterans like Captain Paul Waggett (Basil Radford), a teetotaler and all-around by-the-books spoilsport. He even posts Sergeant Odd (Bruce Seaton), who is on leave, to “enforce” his command banning islanders from boarding the boat.
You can imagine how that edict will stand. Surrealistic comedy and plot twists abound. The latter include a dour mother (Jean Cadell) who henpecks her courage-challenged son George Campbell (Gordon Jackson), two sisters being courted simultaneously (Gabrielle Blunt and a very young Joan Greenwood), a besotted betrothal ceremony (a rèiteach if you want to practice your Gaelic), and several wild goose chases worthy of the Keystone Cops. Being that this is Scotland, you can also anticipate that respectability is a soft target for satire.
A major joy of this film, which comes across even if you struggle with the Scots brogue, is its proliferation of eccentric characters. As is often the case in British/Scottish/Irish films, those parts often went to talented actors given leave to chew some scenery. Cadell’s imperious widow Campbell is in one such role, but there’s also The Biffer (one who throws punches real and metaphorical) played by Morland Graham, loads of inept authority figures, and the delightful turn of James Robertson Justice as a doctor who dispenses the kind of medical advice that we wish all doctors would prescribe. Seton’s Sergeant Odd also lives up to his name.
Yes, the movie does stereotype Scots as the sort who would anything to secure a glass of whisky. And, yes again, to whether the comedy is broad as well as surreal. I reiterate that you might miss some of the funny lines, but even if you only understand half of it, you’ll rise from your chair with a smile upon you lips.
Rob Weir
Note: If you wonder why Gordon Jackson looks familiar, he later achieved instant fame as butler Angus Hudson in the surprise TV hit Upstairs, Downstairs. Joan Greenwood was a well-known movie and TV actress who won even greater acclaim in British theatre. Radford was also in The Lady Vanishes. For the record, scot-free has nothing to do with Scottish people; it comes from a Middle English term that meant exempt from royal taxes.
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