The Brothers

I have seen this film only once, around 1975, but remember it vividly. "The Brothers" is an eerie tale of tragedy in the Scottish Highlands. Set in the Isle of Skye (known as "Eilean a' Cheò/Isle of the Mist") amidst the Gaelic-speaking Celts who inhabit the island, it is full of mystery and superstition surrounding a stern old patriarch, his two sons and the Atlantic coastal community they inhabit. The ensuing tragic story of love and crime wrought by the son is worthy of Shakespeare or classic Greek plays. I was reminded of it somewhat by "The Field" with Richard Harris. If only this film were still available. Someone please re-release it!

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'.

The film is set on Skye yet the girl is passed to the care of a Catholic priest and everybody else seems to be Catholic. The islands of the Hebrides in 1900 were rigidly segregated religiously. Skye was a devoutly Protestant island with its inhabitants being communicants of either the Protestant Church of Scotland or the strictly Calvinist Free Church of Scotland. I do not think there would be a single Catholic priest on the island. Only the islands of Barra and South Uist were devoutly Catholic. For me this renders the whole film farcical.

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.

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).