MY book Scottish Films serves as a guide and reference point to 427 feature films set entirely or substantially in Scotland which remain available to watch.
After more than three years’ work on this, I’ve learnt four key lessons.
First, the tapestry which can be woven out of Scottish films is richer and more varied than you would expect. The earliest entry in the book is a 1917 silent adaptation of Kidnapped (one of six film versions of Robert Louis Stevenson’s book); the most recent to be released is Harvest (from July of this year).
Alphabetically, they run from Richard Jobson’s Edinburgh-set 16 Years Of Alcohol (2003) to Glasgow-set You’re Only Young Twice (1952).
These four films alone give us an adaptation of a Scottish literary classic shot in a New York studio, a misjudged adaptation of a more recent English novel shot and set in Scotland, an indigenous film by a Scottish musician-turned-auteur, and a decent 1950s comedy.
Second, there are certainly some good and probably some excellent Scottish films which you have not seen or heard of.
For an authentic contemporary Scottish voice, start with Shell (2012) and Run (2019) by Scott Graham – the first starring Chloe Pirrie, most recently seen in the TV series, Dept. Q.
To be fair, there are also films leaving so-bad-it’s-good in the dust. Provided they’re not made too earnestly, bad films can be fun, but you should never watch Gregory’s Two Girls (1999), Bill Forsyth’s largely forgotten, misguided sequel to the delightful Gregory’s Girl (1980), or Kids Against The Sorcerers (2016), a Russian-made CGI film which redefines “bad” and is morally repugnant.
Third, far too often, Scotland is patronised and marginalised in cinema, represented by simplistic caricature and reduced to a land of threatening, dangerous or deadly strangeness.
For generic indications that we are in Scotland, we get glens, pipers, whisky and Highland cattle. The latter are also present appropriately in one of the three versions of Rob Roy and put to witty use in Ealing’s 1954 The Maggie. Too often we also get Eilean Donan: in Loch Ness (1996), it’s situated on the shore of the loch!
Three very good Scottish films knowingly reference the clichés: Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996), Ken Loach’s The Angel’s Share (2012) – you don’t have to be born Scottish to understand the value of authenticity – and Graham’s Shell.
If you are making a British film (which normally means “making an English film”) and want a character to undergo a journey of self-discovery, you send them all too often to Scotland.
The same is true if you want people to flee.
In the three versions of John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps (Hitchcock’s 1935 original remains the best), Richard Hannay flees to Scotland before returning to England and triumph. The enemy state in The 39 Steps is not named, but the prospect of war was looming, and viewers would have been thinking “Germany”.
Four later films are more explicit: Germans (three nefarious, one innocent) are in Scotland to be picked up by the German navy. The best of these films is Powell and Pressburger’s The Spy In Black from 1939.
In Scotland, weird stuff happens, and people are changed. In 1944’s sparkling comedy On Approval, two English couples decide to trial marriage before the event; set in the Victorian era, this is so deliciously sinful, the experiment can be conducted only in Scotland (to the indignation of the country house’s staff, who walk out).
In 1998’s The Governess, Minnie Driver’s Jewish character travels to the Highlands for work and then engages in a torrid affair. Sheila Hancock has travelled to Scotland twice: in 1999, she undertook the journey to the Ring of Brodgar in Hold Back The Night in order to die, while in 2017, less drastically, she climbed Mount Suilven in Edie to recover from an abusive marriage.
In 2021’s She Will, Alice Krige travels to the Cairngorms to recover from surgery, to encounter folk horror; in 2023’s Consecration, Jena Malone travels from London to Skye to encounter religious horror. This list could be much, much longer.
Fourth, the reel Scotland is more likely to approach the real Scotland when films have significant Scottish creative input.
Seventy-seven of the films are set, but not shot, in Scotland with no significant Scottish creative input. This gives us Brigadoon, which is a fantastical delight, but reductive in its treatment of our country, or 1948’s The Swordsman, in which we’re asked to believe that a stagecoach chase through California’s canyons is happening in Scotland.
The good news is that, excluding documentaries, there are 134 films made by Scots, featuring Scots in lead roles, set and shot in Scotland – many of which are well worth discovering.
More would be welcome.
