Os Irmãos

Rather a steamy menage a trois on the island of Skye.With 2 brothers in competition for Patricia Roc.All the usual Scottish character actors feature plus welsh Meg Jenkins.However Roc is like the proverbial fish out of water.She is totally unbelievable as a Scottish orphan.I wonder if the rather strange method of execution was dreamed up by the writers.

This is a stunning B&W film shot on location on the Isle of Skye (for the most part), a weird story of sibling rivalry, lust, family honor, and age-old traditions and superstitions. In 1900, an orphaned "girl" arrives on the island to be the drudge of a dour family (a father and two sons). She is lusted after by one brother, but she loves the other. Eventually she's blamed for everything that befalls the family. Basic story is set against the rugged sea coast and a series of "old stories" that are mirrored by their modern-day life.

Patricia Roc is the girl. Finlay Currie is the old father. Maxwell Reed and Duncan Macrae (in a stunning film debut) are the brothers. Will Fyffe gets good billing for a small role as the jovial captain. Andrew Crawford plays Willie, and Megs Jenkins is Angustina. Certainly some stunning scenery. The film seems somewhat lacking in narrative structure, but you'll never forget the story of the little silver fish.

This extraordinary film really deserves to be better known; certainly it ought to be screened somewhere, as it seems to have dropped out of public and critical consciousness. Essentially it's about Patricia Roc driving the men of a Hebridean isle to lust and murder. Hardly natural casting for Roc, who was happiest playing sweetness and light (usually in contrast to Margaret Lockwood in the Gainsborough melodramas), but she gives it her best shot. But it's the tone of the whole piece, the air of malevolence beneath bright skies and spectacular landscapes that stays in the memory. Comedian Will Fyffe has a field day as the harsh father. The aim seems to have been capture the quality of the old Scottish ballads, in their particular blending of beauty and cruelty, and the film makes this overt with its references to the ballad of 'The Great Silke of Skule Skerry'. It also boasts one of the strangest modes of execution you will ever see - but you have to try and seek out the film to find out what. Someone should programme it in a double bill with 'I Know Where I'm Going'.

I only rated this film 5/10 as it seemed under-produced.There was always something missing in the storyline, the casting and even the filming.We had some authentic Scottish actors (but not Megs Jenkins who was Welsh) but Patricia Roc was badly miscast as the leading lady.I prefer to see her in the roles she was good at e.g. those she appeared as leading support for Margaret Lockwood The producers were shy about our sensitivities (probably as a result of war-time censorship) in that we did not see her demise in the film, nor the elder brother's demise by the male islanders on the Isle of Skye who came to exact revenge using the same curious method of execution they had earlier meted out to a turncoat who had shopped them to the excise men.The ending was unsatisfactory and rather abrupt.

By the time this is posted, only Bay Area film-lovers have a chance to attend two screenings Sunday, 12Oct08, of The Brothers (4 pm, 7:30 pm) + The Perfect Woman (5:50 pm, 9:20 pm) with Patricia Roc at Stanford Theatre, Palo Alto CA (3 blocks east of CalTrain station. with weekend trains leaving on hour from SF) as part of series Gainsborough Melodramas & Other Rare Treasure of British Cinema. I have only seen Roc as amiable but wise daughter to Phyllis Calvert's split personality title character in superb Madonna of the Seven Moons (1946) so far (http://www.stanfordtheatre.org/stf/calendars/British%202008.html), which ends 31Oct08.

Roc's cheerfulness counterpointed Margaret Lockwood in The Wicked Lacy (1945) http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/440901/index.html (which I have not seen), the most popular Gainsborough film. Upcoming 17-18-19Oct08: Lockwood and Roc rivals for Stewart Granger in Love Story (1944).