Il tiranno di Glen

U.S. Air Corps Major Lance Lansing (Forrest Tucker) returns to Scotland after WWII to a small glen, where he makes his home due to the laird, Sanin Mengues (Orson Welles), a wealthy South American who's returned to his ancestors' land with his daughter, Marilla (Margaret Lockwood).

Everyone in the glen tries to persuade Mengues to bring piece to their homes, only to have Lansing and Parlan (Victor McLaglen), the Mengues foreman, get in a fight together.

This was listed in my UK TV schedule as a good film and they have it a three-star rating. They made it sound like it was a film about Orson Welles visiting Scotland after the war, which is far from the actual plot.

Welles really chews up the scenery - in a bad way. He's funny but also quite annoying and seems out of place. Lockwood is given little to do but be pretty. Tucker is so-so.

I was disappointed because I was expecting something entertaining and "classy," whereas instead I got a boring, dull and sappy "nice" movie without any real positive traits.

It's not terrible, it's just not very good.

Republic Pictures's biggest hit was "The Quiet Man", John Ford's Irish blarneyfest. Two years later its writer, Frank S Nugent, tried to work that magic on the Scottish Highlands. But "Trouble in the Glen" only had the prolific hack Herbert Wilcox at the helm, and his winning streak with Anna Neagle had gone phfft.

Lensed in sludgy brown Trucolor, "Trouble in the Glen" plays like an Ealing comedy sans asperity, fading quickly into the Celtic twilight from which Brigadoon rises once a century. Orson Welles is a returning laird whose years in South America presumably explain his swarthy skin tones if not his blue-grey bouffant wig. Welles was already a podgy Hollywood outcast wandering the European co-production badlands, scrounging, spending and sometimes shooting: he was between "Othello" and "Mr Arkadin" at this juncture. He relies on his magnificent organ voice and eyes that gleam in the gloom (as in "Jane Eyre") to sustain his turn as a tyrant, at odds both with his glenfolk tenantry and with a roving gang of tinkers. The head "tink" is the terminally fuddled Victor McLaglen, another Ford veteran.

Stuffing casts with faded US talent to win a Stateside circuit release was standard operating procedure for the struggling Britflick biz of the early 1950s. Besides Citizen Kane and Sgt Quincannon, "Trouble in the Glen" toplines the colourless Forrest Tucker. Like John Wayne in "The Quiet Man", Nugent makes him a Yank on a sentimental journey. Like Wayne, he banters or scraps with the locals and tames a spirited filly: Maggie Lockwood, the laird's daughter, in reality four years older than Orson! Her cut-glass accent matches neither Welles's nor the area's Scotch English. There is also a winsome, bedridden little girl for Tucker to set on her feet.

The subplot concerns unjust suspicions that the tinkers stole a deer. Has there ever been a movie in which gypsies or traveling people actually did the crimes of which they are accused?

It all started with a fish. Wealthy South American Sanin Mengues has returned to the Scottish home of his forefathers and is Laird of the Glen. However his poor attempts at fishing frustrates his foreman Parlan to the point where he insults his boss and is promptly fired. This sparks a great unrest across the Glen and a standoff between the landowner and his employees ensues. Into the mix of this comes American Major Jim Lansing, returning after the war to find that he is now going to have to broker peace rather than make war.

Following the success of similar films trading on Celtic/Gaelic "charm" and the like, this film was produced with quite an impressive (on paper) cast hoping to cash in. The problem is with the plot – it isn't focused on Sanin Mengues so much as it is on Lansing, his little Scottish girl and his romances, and my gosh is it dull and sentimental. The stuff involving Sanin is at least boisterous and quite fun but this is mostly placed on the sidelines and it means that the film is mostly pretty boring. It wallows too much in unconvincing sentiment and relationships that don't ring true, producing a main plot thread that almost totally fails to engage in any way shape or form.

The noisy plot thread involving Sanin is reasonably fun mainly because of a hammy piece of p*ss-taking from Orson Welles, who just seems to be enjoying himself in a different film from everyone else. He is comparatively terrible of course but at least he is funny. Lockwood is totally wasted in the film with nothing to do of any merit and, although she does try, there is a reason why few viewers would recall this film in her back catalogue. Tucker is wooden and dull, a fact not helped by how hilariously OTT Welles is. He may have third billing but he is the lead character and the film suffers as a result. McLagen is quite good and works well with Welles but the rest of the support cast are fairly average Scottish stereotypes.

Overall this is a poor film that is built on a dull plot with big dollops of sentimentality. There are moments that are lively and funny but they are few and far between and certainly do not do enough to keep things interesting. If you're desperate for a dated piece of Celtic "charm" then by all means give this a go but I doubt many viewers will get anything from it.

Quite entertaining in a 1950's style.

Classed a comedy but not a rib-tickler.

Orson plays the Laird, a wealthy South American. Of course he comes over as .......Orson Welles.

There is a smattering of bagpipes, and the usual strained Scots accents, irritating or part of the charm - depending on your views. Mischief, poaching, local rivalries, an invalid girl and Margaret Lockwood all thrown into the mix. (Ms Lockwood looking particularly vivacious.)

Location Note: As Forrest Tucker arrives in the "Scottish" village in an early scene, the live location is actually in front of the Church House Inn, in Harberton, near Totnes, South Devon.

Made with massive profits as a sort of sequel to Republic's mega hit of 1952 THE QUIET MAN, this easy to love piece of B pic blarney shows just how stupendously successful THE QUIET MAN actually was. A lot of very profitable films in the UK ran into a law that saw the rentals marooned there and not able to be returned to the USA, in fact Disney and MGM made many films in the UK to soak up the rentals held in a bank trust there by this law. For once in it's budget constricted life the Kingdomof Repubic made soooo much money there they could'nt get it all home and were basically happily forced to make another version of THE QUIET MAN which I am sure suited them fine anyway. Obviously not as big nor as successful as that film, TROUBLE IN THE GLEN was the sort of charming rustic family film made regularly in the UK anyway. GEORDIE is a good example. TROUBLE has a great cast and a few surprises (such as Orson Welles) to add prestige..or maybe he was a Republic favourite after MACBETH. Anyway, TROUBLE is quaint robust fun and just like a hybrid of THE QUIET MAN and their own truly superb Americana drama made in 1956 COME NEXT SPRING and.... LISBON.