IS SCOTLAND still proud of Brigadoon? When it opened on stage in New York, in 1947, it ran for 581 performances. That was a hit, and it made the names of two young men – Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Brigadoon is the lovely, twee and bewitched Highland village that comes to life just one day in a century.
Of course, it's a glorified poster for tourism to remote and enchanted places. Like many such ventures from Hollywood, it was filmed on sumptuous, insane sets. One climax of this – glorious movie, but daft Scotland – has Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse (
she's a village lass!), dancing on a Highland hillside set to the music of 'The Heather On The Hill'. In CinemaScope and colour. It'll make any Scot cringe today, until you relax and realise that a film can be great and terrible at the same time.
Picking just 10 films, you get a lot of those mixed feelings. Brigadoon is 1955 and one day a century. Trainspotting is 1996, and one damned day after another in the grip of addiction. Brigadoon is an American genius, Vincente Minnelli, who loved dream, while Trainspotting is that collection of modern Scots – Danny Boyle, John Hodge, Ewan McGregor – who can't escape their nightmares and know that life goes on every day for the worst part of a century. Which movie would you rather live in? Which would you offer as a portrait of Scotland?
I certainly want I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), by Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger, though I can see that a modern sensibility might judge that it's a very aristocratic, arty view of the islands and their romance. Michael Powell did love Scotland and the Celtic twilight, and he went to Mull and many other places. But his film has an air of studio artifice and leading players who are not Scottish. Still, it identifies a spirit in Scotland – pagan, Romantic, practical and dangerous – that I want to believe in. And it is a most beautiful, imaginative film fit to take your breath away.
Chances are you're waiting for me to mention Braveheart (1995) which, I suppose, is the only Scottish film that won the Best Picture Oscar. Well, there you are, I've mentioned it, and I gather that it did a lot to raise enthusiasm and tourism. But I don't like Mel Gibson's film – not because of its view of the English (my tribe), but because it's overflowing with blood and cruelty. Just to prove to you how little I esteem such things, I'm including Peter Watkins' Culloden (1964), a documentary-like account of that fateful action, a film that may be forgotten now – and so all the more reason to find it and see it.
I'm not having Whisky Galore (1949), thank you very much, though I hope it's still a funny picture. But I fear it has a cosy, smug view of Scottish life, sentimental, misleading and chains upon the real Scottish experience. So instead I'm going for more recent pictures where life is sometimes hard and boring, and seldom prettified – I want the Bill Douglas Trilogy (1972-8), My Name Is Joe (1998) by Ken Loach and Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar (2002), because they have a mixture of quality, grimness and truth that I find irresistible.
Of course, you're going to complain at this list. That's the point of it. It's here to make you argue and think. And I buy your point, that if I'm modern and drab then I ought to include Breaking The Waves – but I'm not because I find that Lars von Trier film exaggerated and insufferable, and without an ounce of Scots humour.
So I've got my share of movies about today and the hard life. There are a couple I can think of because they deal with a smarter kind of Scottish life, where the people speak beautifully, even if the actors are English. I love the tart Edinburgh eloquence of Maggie Smith in The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie and the mood of David Lean's Madeleine where Ann Todd emerges with a not-proven verdict from being tried for poisoning her lover. For a David Lean picture, Madeleine is nearly unknown. It's black and white and breathtakingly beautiful, and it leaves you remembering the smart, wicked Scottish life that went on inside respectable houses.
I'm omitting a lot of other things, from John Grierson's Drifters (1929) – and Grierson was the most important Scot in the history of film – to Gillies MacKinnon's Small Faces (1996). I'm omitting the harshness of Hans Petter Moland's Aberdeen (2000), and I haven't included one foot of film with Sir Sean Connery, David Niven or Deborah Kerr in it. I apologise for that and the omission of all the Bonnie Prince Charlie films, not to mention the versions of Kidnapped or The Master Of Ballantrae. I realise that The 39 Steps is a bit of a Scottish film – and I love it.
But I think I have only one space left in my 10 (and remember that they can be good or bad or good and bad). My last spot goes to a picture shot 6,000 miles away from Scotland. But it is the Scottish play: it's Macbeth (1948), as done by Orson Welles, who could hardly do a Scottish accent without sounding Irish, but he understands the blend of witchcraft and modern Macchiavelli in that great, murderous play. The Welles Macbeth was done very cheaply (like most Scottish films) and it leaves you trembling at a place so rugged and so poetic. It's a great film, and in my sweetest whisky dreams I can see Birnham Wood and Dunsinane merging together in the mist, with the horned helmet of Orson's Macbeth giving chase to the dainty footwork of Cyd Charisse. I know, I know, the movies can leave you weary from the dreaming and the thought that Scotland must be on the edge of the world. That's why you need the chilly, academic voice of Jean Brodie to bring you to your senses.
So, here's my 10 (in no particular order): Trainspotting; I Know Where I'm Going!; Culloden; Madeleine; Macbeth; The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie; The Bill Douglas Trilogy; My Name Is Joe; Morvern Callar and Brigadoon. Have I left anything out?
David Thomson served on the selection committee for the New York Film Festival, co-authored a book with Marlon Brando and has written biographies of Nicole Kidman and Orson Welles. Have You Seen...? A personal introduction to 1,000 films including masterpieces, oddities and guilty pleasures (with just a few disasters), by David Thomson (Allen Lane), is out on Thursday, £22The full article contains 1125 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
