"The longest unsponsored advertisement ever to reach cinema screens", reckoned producer Monja Danischewski. Maybe so, but Alexander Mackendrick's debut feature is much more than that. This comic account of a real-life event pitches a priggish English army captain against the remorseless guile of an islandful of thirsty Scots defending a cache of shipwrecked whisky, and helped make ‘Ealing Comedy’ one of British cinema’s most enduring brands. It's a film of boundless mischief, and it marked Mackendrick from the start as the most complex and subtle of Ealing's directors.
Up Next in Drama
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Wittgenstein
Written for Channel 4 by radical literary theorist Terry Eagleton but heavily reworked by Derek Jarman, Wittgenstein is a bold, offbeat biography, personalised in Jarman’s unique style to address the politics and sexuality of the great, troubled philosopher.
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The Pornographer
When the son of former porn filmmaker Jacques Laurent found out what his father did for living, he ran away from home and refused to have any contact with him. Laurent put an end to his career. Many years later, his financial problems meant he had to take up his old profession again. The professi...
