Whisky Galore!

Along with classical music Compton Mackenzie certainly knew his stuff when he wrote Whisky Galore, basing it on true events that happened in 1941. I always preferred the film. The quality of the video I made from UK BBC2 on 28th Dec 1988 was excellent, but there are budget editions out there so if interested best be careful. This is one of Ealing's handful of timeless first class classics, one that is always shown on TV and has passed into British movie folklore. Its depiction of the Sabbath-keeping Scottish islanders is only just passing into history as the inhabitants of the Outer Hebrides are only gradually establishing Sunday communications with the mainland.

Insular isolated island runs out of whisky but a cargo ship with 50,000 cases of the muck runs aground nearby. Happy times return, against all the efforts of Basil Radford as the local snooty (English) Home Guard Captain. Bruce Seton was actually a rather weather-beaten 40 to Joan Greenwood's 28 but they surely made a splendid non whisky drinking couple especially at the dance. Favourite bits: The church clock striking for the arrival of Monday morning and the consequent sudden activity; The group of men singing lustily and making hay with their first drink for ages; Hiding the muck from the Excise men, and so much more to watch and savour over and over again.

Ealing Studios went to Barra in summer 1948 and filmed this in 3 months for £80,000 - over-budget, too! When I think of the enormous pleasure that it's given me and so many others over the decades I would think that it was money very well spent, unlike any that might be spent on a pointless remake.

A little town on a Scottish Isle suffers the most horrifying predicament, of which the outbreak of WWII in hindsight seemed to be an omen: they're out of whiskey! Everyone goes into an almost catatonic state until fortune takes a turn for the better: a ship is wrecked on a reef. The cargo: 50,000 cases of whiskey. But there's one do-gooder, the local militia leader, who just can't allow the cargo to be put to use. That, he says would lead to anarchy. Many well defined characters, good plot.

When I hear the phrase-"Celtic Twilight"-not so much in use now--I've come to think of this film. The meaning of "Celtic Twilight" might be summarized as the sense that history has passed by Ireland and other Celtic peoples in Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, etc., and what we see now is a sort of a cultural endgame, leading to its long and inevitable death throes.

Whiskey Galore, about a wartime whiskey-starved island in the Outer Hebrides, displays these kinds of characters: a full-grown man afraid of telling his mother he wants to marry a local girl, and his intolerant domineering crone of a mother; a gossipy telephone operator; an out-of-it ferry captain, unaware of the rising sexual tension his daughters are undergoing; and dozens of mischievous, winking, alcohol-craving townspeople who are dying to loot an abandoned ship full of their beloved whiskey but afraid to do it on the Sabbath!

One more character, played by Basil Radford, is the stuffy, self-important head of the local militia, out of step with the other residents, sworn to uphold the law. Apparently the director, Alexander Makendrick, objected to the character's silly and ineffectual pomposity.

This is truly one of the great, charming Ealing comedies, very remindful to me of the Irish-American citizens of my mother's home town, Brasher Falls, New York. A gem in its sly humor--although the video copies I've seen are of a murky quality.

A lovely bit of nostalgia here, one of the greats of British comedy. The isle of Toddy becomes for a while at least a true paradise when the islanders find themselves rescuing part of the cargo of a wrecked ship carrying precious whisky, despite the efforts of the sassenach jobsworth running the local home guard. A wealth of wonderful moments, a softly-spoken gentleness that has always characterised this kind of movie (and lives on in such modern works as Hear My Song and Waking Ned), and a kind but firm lack of respect for bureaucratic authority soaked throughout the entire film make this a delight and a joy every time.

To all that's been said by other viewers, I'd just like to add that, to me, the comedy derives not only from the sheer situation - a whole cast of beautiful Scottish island dwellers / a ship washed ashore with holds full of precious rare whiskey at a time of dire storage, but from the way this bunch of islanders deal with the 'rules' and go around all of them. A godsend shipment of whiskey in war time is one thing, the armed forces trying to apply some rule to such an unruly population is another, but they also have to deal with 2 even bigger forces, the tide and Sabbath! The inner struggles of these good people to finally manage and have the proper wedding ceremony, and the ensuing traditional ceilidh make the movie a delight of good, unpretentious comedy, while the fond memory that remains is that of mankind working around cultural/historical setting to remain what they are deep at heart, and behave accordingly. And yes, there is also the wonderful Joan Greenwood, with her ragged velvet voice and smooth acting...