Whiskey Galore!

A really funny small classic from Ealing Studios. NOT the name of a drunk Bond movie character.

From this fun, odd website. The website’s about model ships used in movie special-effect shots! What a great nerdy topic. Fair use.

Whiskey Galore! (1949). Grade: B+

It’s set in Scotland, during WWII. On a small island in the north, where everything needs to be brought in by boat. Rationing, or the wartime disruption of the supply chain, or something, has caused shipments of whiskey to stop.

This naturally leads to widespread misery. One old man complains to his doctor — who’s popping by to drop off some tobacco! — that these are the hardest times since the Biblical flood.

Until, one dark and stormy night… the S.S. Cabinet Minister runs aground on some pointy rocks. A keen-eared fellow in town hears this (I don’t think that’s strictly possible) and several local boaters go out to rescue the crew.

The crew tells them that the cargo hold has 50,000 cases of whiskey in it…

This sounds like a Prohibition-era silent comedy, or a 1980s frat-house party plot. But it’s really just a cheerful celebration/idealization of small-town Scottish life, like the charming 1945 I Know Where I’m Going — and even has one of the same cast members, Jean Cadell (she has a bigger role here).

And it’s also very funny in places, the way Local Hero was — where the humor comes largely from watching these oddballs be odd. With some good one-liners and visual gags (there’s a laugh-out-loud visual gag at the climax). It doesn’t really matter that the plot involves getting whiskey; it could involve a plan to rebuild an old castle or get everyone together for a fireworks show.

It’s actually very loosely based on real events! In 1941 the S.S. Politician ran aground on rocks off Scottish shores, and among its cargo were 22,000 cases of whiskey headed for America. Local islanders took parts of the cargo, some little, some big. Eventually some of the islanders who stole/salvaged whiskey were prosecuted — largely on grounds they’d gotten it without paying liquor taxes!

Scottish author Compton Mackenzie heard about the incident, and published his novel Whiskey Galore in 1947, and it was a huge success. He would later co-write the film version, and get a cameo role as the grounded ship’s captain.

The director, Alexander Mackendrick, was a Scottish filmmaker (born in Boston, to Scottish parents, and they moved back to Scotland when he was a kid). He’d worked on some TV commercials and in doing some production assistance at Ealing Studios; this was the first movie he directed. You can tell he loves the sound of these Scottish actors; everyone’s perfectly understandable, but they all have very lovely brogues.

The movie was shot on location on the island of Barra (where novel writer Mackenzie lived), which was a stroke of good luck — it’s only because most of Ealing’s indoor studios were busy at the time. The buildings look appropriately quaint, the sea appropriately menacing enough to wreck ships and pretty enough for a idealized rural setting.

Mackendrick sorta crapped on the film later, saying it didn’t look very good, and that he intended one character to be more sympathetic. It looks fine! (There’s a little too much fake fog in some moments, hardly a sin for 1949.) And that character Mackendrick wanted to be more sympathetic shouldn’t be! That fact that he’s a by-the-book rules stickler is what makes him funny! When he calls his bored superior on the mainland to brag about his plan to nail the salvagers, that superior gets immediately interested — not in praising the stickler, but in getting a bottle of whiskey for himself.

The stickler’s played by Basil Radford, who was a pretty popular British comic actor of the time. He’d played half of “Charters and Caldicott,” two goofily cricket-obsessed middle-aged men. They’d first appeared in The Lady Vanishes, and were such a hit with audiences that they reappeared in multiple films and on radio as variations on the same characters.

Also of note is Jean Cadell, as the stern mother of a local schoolteacher who wants to get married. Mom doesn’t want that to happen! Which seems like a fairly standard old-timey plot point, except that is this case the schoolteacher is a fully grown adult man (Gordon Jackson, also in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). Mom pushes him around and tells him when he can/can’t leave the house; she’s a self-righteous tyrant. (You half wonder if she’ll end up working for the rules stickler, imprisoning salvagers). It’s a neat, domineering performance by Cadell. She does get to loosen up, just a smidge, at the end, when her son manages to show a little backbone. (Hint, the title, that’s a hint.)

You may/may not recognize Joan Greenwood as somebody else who wants to get married — she was the vengeful conniver in Kind Hearts and Coronets. Alas, she doesn’t get to do too much, here. The proposed marriages are really just a useful plot point, and an excuse to have a nice public get-together at the end. Her beau is a likeable Brit (Bruce Seton) who works for Radford’s rule stickler, and isn’t as much of a tool.

At the end, we’re given a funny bit of over-the-top narration to tell us that everyone on the island who got their whisky ends up miserable and probably headed for the early grave they richly deserve, except the only two teetotalers in town. This might have been to please American censors — and in fact, the movie had to be called “Tight Little Island” for US release.

It was a big hit in the US, and probably did a fairly good job of promoting Scottish whiskey sales! The bottles in the film don’t have a visible name stamped on them, but they sure look like the diagonal labels on Johnnie Walker to me. The company that owned Johnnie Walker gave out free bottles after the opening to the filmmakers.

Bottom line is, if you enjoy these kinds of Quaint Rural Accent Town movies, you’ll enjoy this one. Even if you don’t much care for whiskey, yourself. But if you don’t like Scottish whiskey, Nick Offerman would like a word with you.