Monday 22 August 2016

Whisky Galore


Last night - for a bit of escapism - we watched 'Whisky Galore' (again).

As when I watch any film set in the recent past on a remote Scottish island, I find that I remind myself of the probable reality of living within a tight, Puritanical society which monitors your every move and has no compunction in expressing extreme and public disapproval if you should transgress any of the many petty laws which were designed to hold them all together in adversity, like an invisible glue.

Then - when I return to my own day-to-day reality - I realise that compared to the remote islands of the 1940s, we have many more petty restrictions than they ever did, the only difference being that ours are laws created by legislators and actually written down in books.

Oh well, at least we are now allowed to work on the Sabbath. Someone has to keep the wheels of commerce going right through the weekend, otherwise much revenue would be lost.

23 comments:

  1. And we have still the British laws:)

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  2. Did you enjoy yourselves immensely watching the film?

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  3. It is many years since I saw that film Tom - would love to see it again although I suppose it would be old fashioned by today's standards.

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  4. Another Scottish favourite is the 1955 film 'Geordie', with Bill Travers as a hammer swinging Olympian.

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    1. Don't know that one. 'i Know Where I'm Going' is the staple for me.

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    2. He's great in it as is james robinson justice

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    3. I always get fed up with the same old actors faces in modern films, but it has always been like that. The cast of Whisky Galore are all familiar to me from all the other films, right up to the 1980s. Petula Clark is a child star in I Know Where I'm Going, and she still is going.

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  5. Peter May's The Black House. I've just read about the Isle of Lewis, a who dunnit.

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  6. When I first visited London in the mid-1970s, few restaurants were open on Sundays, which was so different from New York. Actually, back then, some of the more posh NYC shops closed on August weekends because their clientele spent that month elsewhere. It's different now, but not necessarily better.

    Think I might have seen that movie.

    Best wishes.

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    1. We had to wait for pubs to open until 5.30pm - every day.

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  7. There is something very comforting about watching old films, and I'm not sure why that is. Certain old films are classics and always worth a second or third or whatever viewing, and they never disappoint.

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    1. Some I have watched more times than I can remember, and I still intend to watch them again.

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  8. I think the prof bases himself on gordon jackson's mother

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    1. Ha ha! Yes, I can see that too. His foot will eventually start tapping after a wee dram, I expect.

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