Scotland At The Movies

28 April 2009, 12:23

Murray Grigor, the Scottish film-maker, has revealed that the director of the classic Scottish movie Whisky Galore felt the story was “morally bankrupt” and struggled to settle on the final script with its writer.

Alexander MacKendrick was behind the much-loved 1949 farce based on the real-life story of the SS Politician which ran aground on the Hebridean island of Eriskay during World War Two carrying 24,000 cases of whisky. The cargo ship was then looted by local islanders who were quick to spy an opportunity during the wartime ration period.

But as Murray explains, MacKendrick was at loggerheads with writer Compton MacKenzie (who wrote a novel based on the incident) and producer Monja Danischewsky as to how they would tell the tale.

He said: “There’s a lot of tension in the script of this film because Compton MacKenzie saw it one way, Danischewsky saw it another way,  the romantic Russian, and Sandy, he saw it a third way.

“He (MacKendrick) thought it was morally bankrupt (the story), he really didn’t appreciate that the islanders were stealing this whisky effectively and so it took a bit of turning round to create this tension in this film.”

At the centre of MacKendrick’s internal struggles may have been the less reported fact that the ship also contained a significant amount of cash. It has been disclosed in recent years by the Home Office that there was nearly 290,000 ten shilling notes on board (several million in today’s money), which was not recovered in full.

Grigor, however, does not hide his admiration for the finished work and also the qualities of its director.

He added: “Alexander MacKendrick was a genius. Although this was his first film he had an extraordinary ability to fire up actors. But also, he said, the genius of that film, (if you can call it a film - he called it a mock-documentary really), is that he got the locals and the professionals to work together. He said the locals give probity to the actor’s performances and the actors kept disciplining the locals.”

Last updated: 28 April 2009, 12:26