Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue

If you're looking for a perfect swashbuckler in which people sound like stage Scots, ye can nae do better than this movie about the Scottish cattle thief and protection racketeer whom the early 18th-Century press, along with highwaymen, romanticized into heroes; the magnificently idiotic image was perfected by Sir Walter Scott and so we have this flick.

Disney went full English with this, shooting at Elstree and the Highlands with a British cast, and the care shows, particularly with Guy Green's beautiful oil-painting Technicolor lighting. Richard Todd gives a fine performance in the traditional, anachronistic costume; Glynis Johns (who is still with us as I write this) has never been cuter; Finlay Currie was never more Scottish; and John Robertson Justice, as the Duke of Argyll, plays his role as befitting a man whose name is John Robertson Justice, even though his real middle name was Norval.

The third and last of his British made films with Richard Todd is Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue. As per a Disney family audience it's a lot more upbeat than the Nineties version of this same tale that starred Liam Neeson.

It's after the 1715 uprising and James Robertson Justice as the Duke of Argyll wants to bring peace to Scotland as he's figured out the Stuarts ain't coming back. But his aide Lord Montrose has a wholly different agenda going and it involves a special if unspecified grudge he has against the MacGregor Clan as headed by Richard Todd.

Anyway in many attempts they just can't seem to capture Todd or intimidate the MacGregors. The Earl of Montrose is played by Michael Gough and his bloodthirsty aide is played with special relish by Geoffrey Keen.

Rob Roy is not quite up to the excellence of Robin Hood and The Sword and the Rose, but Richard Todd is earnest and athletic and every inch a Scottish hero. There was definitely a special eye for the customs and mores of Eighteenth Century Scotland in the making of Rob Roy. And it holds up well after over half a century.

Walt Disney's follow-up to THE STORY OF ROBIN HOOD AND HIS MERRIE MEN (1952) is this similar epic about another legendary outlaw (emanating from Scotland this time around). He is once again played by Irishman Richard Todd (who has just passed away at the venerable age of 90) and the film even re-unites the actor with his three co-stars from yet another period outing from the Disney Studios, THE SWORD AND THE ROSE (1953), namely Glynis Johns, James Robertson Justice and Michael Gough. For some reason, the film is fairly maligned (awarded a measly *1/2 by the "Leonard Maltin Film Guide"!) but I rather enjoyed it, while readily admitting to be the least of Disney's three colorful adventures derived from the pages of English history. In traditional Disney fashion, the familiar events were simplified (though by no means rendered juvenile, as would often prove the case later) but there is enough sprawling action and engrossing drama – to say nothing of the beautiful scenery captured in gleaming Technicolor – to please most audiences. Similarly, characterization for this type of larger-than-life fare is pretty much standard but, given careful casting all round, it emerges as forceful rather than clichéd; besides, at a terse 81 minutes, the film has little chance of outstaying its welcome. Incidentally, I had found the flabby, oddly uninvolving and ill-cast 1995 remake (which had garnered critical praise and at least one top Oscar nod back in the day) a major disappointment on my sole viewing so far!

This film is a mixed bag. It has some excellent aspects, but it does tend to drag a bit, and it is a muddle of accents. It is set in the highlands of Scotland during a very complicated time, and does not do a very good job of explaining this complicated political situation. While it probably looked vibrant when it was first put out, today it looks very muddy and boring, like they were filming at the end of February or the beginning of November. There are two parts which are quite funny, the first is when Rob is trying to ask for someone's hand in marriage and his future father-in-law is loudly playing with the reed of a bagpipe. The second is that the new German King of England George the first needed a translator and spoke in a very thick German accent, and spoke in German to highlanders who happened to understand German. It's often compared to the last film about Rob Roy they made, in the early 90s, while I have seen that film, I do not remember it very well, so I can't really compare the two. It seems to me an American imagining of the story of Scotland, and I think that most films about Scotland are American imaginings of Scottish history that they idealize. I think that's because America is a country of immigrants and while there is a civic identity of America, there isn't an ethnic American identity, so often the descendants of these immigrants tend to latch on to a sort of mythic past. It's the same thing in Canada, where I grew up, or at least during the time when I grew up. People would identify as Scottish or Highlanders, but never as the English, although everyone I grew up with was mostly a mixture of these ethnicities.

Although I said I had seen this film before it was at least 44 years ago and I was only a strapping lad of about 6 or 7 so my comments of the film might be touched with some nostalgia.I have incidently seen the new release of Rob Roy several times but I somehow prefer the 1953 version.