WELCOME to day two of our top 20 Scottish film moments of all time. Why film moments and not films? We thought it would be more interesting, allowing us to offer an alternative slant on what makes films important and memorable, as well as to look beyond Scottish films (however you define that term), at movies that have had an effect on how Scotland is perceived elsewhere, or have reflected ideas about Scottish identity.
In compiling our list we set ourselves some ground rules - our moments didn't have to be from Scottish films, but would have to have an identifiable Scottish connection on screen. We also wanted to avoid any film featuring on the list more than once.
I'm much indebted to the panel of experts who assembled the list: Janice Forsyth of Radio Scotland's The Movie Café; film critics Mike McCahill and Eddie Harrison; film writer Brian Pendreigh. Mark Cousins, the author of The Story of Film, also contributed.
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'LET'S GET PISHED!' SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER, THOMAS SCHLAMME, 1993
"I think most Scottish cuisine is based on a dare," muses Charlie McKenzie (Mike Myers) in silly but likeable romantic comedy So I Married an Axe Murderer, a frothy pop-culture enterprise hugely enlivened by a throwaway subplot involving Charlie's Scottish parents May and Stuart, played by Brenda Fricker and Myers under several pounds of latex.
Having spent a few formative years in Scotland, Canadian comic Myers would later do the Caledonian joke to death by using the same accent for Shrek and the Fat Bastard character in the Austin Powers series, but the first scene in which Charlie introduces us to his family life is a genuine hoot. Patriarch Stuart McKenzie is shown watching football on television constantly, listening to Rod Stewart's Do Ya Think I'm Sexy, and hurling manly abuse at his family, saving his vilest vitriol for his younger ginger-haired son, whose unfeasibly large head is cruelly described as resembling "an orange on a toothpick".
Kitted out with double-glazed Mick McGahey bifocals and quickly accumulating a pile of McEwan's Export bottles on the sideboard, Stuart McKenzie is a boisterous sketch of a Scotsman who is comfortable in exile.
EDDIE HARRISON
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THE ROOF BLOWS OFF THE CHURCH, ORPHANS, PETER MULLAN, 1997
A SURPRISE sleeper hit at UK cinemas, writer/director Peter Mullan's absurdist depiction of a Glasgow family suffering in the aftermath of their mother's death was a dark delight, typified by blackly comic images such as Gary Lewis attempting to carry a coffin on his own, or Douglas Henshall floating down the Clyde on a pallet, washing up as waste on the tide among the debris of the now-defunct shipyards. But Mullan's most dramatic image comes when the roof of a Glasgow church is blown off during a storm.
It's a crude visual technically, a coup of imagination rather than special effects. But while Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters proved to be a more precise attack on ritualistic behaviour and abuse, the gratuitous destruction of the church in Orphans exposes not only the characters to inclement elements which lash down with a Lear-like intensity, but symbolises the loss of protection which was previously provided to the siblings by the past, their mother, and their religion.
It's a mischievous conceit, but one that pierces to the heart of Mullan's compassionate view of urban life for modern Scots, struggling against adversity like orphans in the storm.
EDDIE HARRISON
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THAT SEX SCENE, RED ROAD, ANDREA ARNOLD, 2006
SO INTIMATE, terrifying, brilliantly directed and, ahem, performed that some viewers wondered whether the sex was real. Rest assured, shocking it may be - Shortbus it ain't. CCTV operator Jackie (Kate Dickie) and menacing ex-con Clyde (Tony Curran) are finally alone in his tiny bedroom in Glasgow's Red Road flats. This is no ordinary encounter. Clyde fancies Jackie and thinks his luck's in, but he doesn't realise that she has engineered the whole thing. She tracked Clyde down because they are somehow connected. The viewer doesn't know what that connection is. This situation doesn't make sense. Why does our unhappy heroine want to be alone with a man she appears to hate? The tension is unbearable. In the messy room lit only by a lava lamp, the ginger charmer takes off Jackie's shoes, massages her feet, unbuttons her shirt. Jackie sits, impassive. Clyde calls her a "sexy f***in' bitch", and she's jolted into action, stripping off, baring herself for intimacy with him and the camera. The antithesis of the clichéd movie sex scene (could that be because it's directed by a woman?) what follows is unlike anything seen before in Scottish film. A sequence that will be discussed for years to come.
JANICE FORSYTH
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A BUS JOURNEY TO A NEW HOUSE AND A NEW LIFE, RATCATCHER, LYNNE RAMSAY, 1999
ONE OF the most poignant sequences in world cinema, not just Scottish film. In the middle of the Glasgow refuse-collectors' strike of the 1970s, 12-year-old James enjoys a fleeting escape from the filthy back-courts of Maryhill. He buys a tenpenny ticket on the local bus and takes a seat, the sole passenger on the top deck. The rat-infested, bin-bag strewn streets are soon replaced by fields and a sense of space. For the first time, there's a beautiful, upbeat musical soundtrack and the possibility of new horizons.
James alights at the terminus at the edge of the city and wanders into a deserted building site where new homes are under construction. He goes into one of the houses, lies down in the polythene-wrapped bath (posh compared to the tin one at home), pees in the unplumbed toilet, imagines what it would be like to live there. And then he finds his room with a view. He's drawn to a huge unglazed window on the other side of which is a vast, golden field. He climbs out and runs through the field. Music swells again as he jumps and does handstands of joy. It's his one moment of freedom, freedom to be a wee boy, untrammelled by poverty and fear.
The cinematography and the repeated motifs of the picture-frame window and the golden fields are exquisite, but the sequence's real power lies in the sociological, historical and emotional truth of that journey. Over the decades, thousands of working-class tenement-dwellers have made similar trips, whether to the more distant hills or just to the edge of town. An escape, however brief, from cramped living conditions; a glimpse of new horizons. Ratcatcher was a triumphant feature debut by Ramsay, with this particular sequence reminiscent of Earth, the 1930 film by Soviet director Alexander Dovzhenko.
JANICE FORSYTH
THE TOP 20 SO FAR
17 From 20th-century New York to 16th-century Scotland - in one camera movement, Highlander, Russell Mulcahy, 1986
18 'This is the night mail crossing the border', Night Mail, John Grierson, 1936
19 Lizzie reads Frankie's letters on the bus, Dear Frankie, Shona Auerbach, 2004
20 Panavision cameras swoop over Glasgow's Necropolis, Deathwatch, Bertrand Tavernier, 1979
DO YOU AGREE?
Whatever you think of our choices - and our omissions - we'd love to hear your views. Please get in touch with us, either by post or at www.scotsman.com/top20 where, from Friday, you'll be able to read the whole list and the reasons for each choice.
