I cannot change the colour of the headings of these posts without, I think, mucking up the entire website, which is most annoying!

I’ve had some early responses to the book. One reader sent through an amazing list of titles which they think I should consider as being ‘Scottish films’ within my definition. What is absolutely infuriating is that two of these featured in a much earlier version of the book, but somehow – through the many edits – were deleted without my noticing. I paste both entries below. All I can say at this point is mea culpa, and ‘sorry’. I’ll be up front in posts about any mistakes and omissions.

Mark

HALLAM FOE (aka MISTER FOE) (2007)

Directed by David Mackenzie

Screenplay by David Mackenzie, Ed Whitmore

Leading cast: Jamie Bell (Hallam); Sophia Myles (Kate); Claire Forlani (Verity); Lucy Holt (Lucy); Ciarán Hinds (Julius)

Colour, 95 minutes, UK

The Borders: Hallam spies on a couple having sex and later has dinner with his father, Julius, and stepmother Verity, to celebrate the departure of Lucy, his sister, for Australia. His mother died by suicide; Hallam suspects Verity killed her. Verity finds Hallam’s diary, detailing his spying; she seduces him, then tells him it is time for him to leave. He goes to Edinburgh and sees Kate, who reminds him of his mother. He follows her to the hotel where she works and persuades her to give him a job. He finds out where Kate lives, breaks into her flat and spies on her at night. Hallam reports to the police that his stepmother killed his father. Kate offers him a better job. On his 18th birthday, Kate joins him for drinks, and invites him home. She attempts to seduce him, but fails, although next day, in an empty hotel room, they have sex. Kate’s lover tells her that Hallam has been spying on her and Kate tells him to leave her alone and fires him. Later Hallam explains himself to Kate, spends time with her, and is given his job back. His father and Verity need his consent to develop land attached to their house; he insists Verity killed his mother, breaks into the family home, and attempts to drown her, but then saves her. His father explains the facts behind his mother’s death, and the family reconcile. Hallam visits Kate, who is now in another relationship, and he agrees to come back in five years.

Hallam Foe is one of four films in this book to be directed by David Mackenzie (see also Young Adam, Perfect Sense, Outlaw King). It opened the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2007, and won multiple awards at other festivals, along with the Scottish BAFTA best actress award for Sophia Myles. The film is based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Peter Jinks, but the story of an obsession with heavy Freudian overtones (Verity, having seen Kate, asks Hallam if he enjoys having sex with his mother) works better on the page than it does in a compressed version on film.

The film walks a fine line between the charming (at places verging on romcom, although never quite falling into the genre; Mackenzie has said that ‘there’s some quite strong comedic elements in it – to me it’s an ugly duckling story’), the uneasy, and the downright creepy. In Sight and Sound Philip Kemp referred to a ‘tone of mingled manic obsession and farce’. At times events move too quickly without sufficient explanation, lacking credibility. Verity’s rapid recovery, and instant lack of condemnation after Hallam has attempted to drown her, then saves her, is particularly jarring.

Interviewed in The Scotsman, Mackenzie explained that his challenge as screenwriter was to collapse the novel’s timeframe from four years to the three weeks over which the film is set, which goes some way to explaining the abruptness of some of the action. Mackenzie also moved Hallam’s family home from Leicestershire to the Borders and gave Hallam a job that in the same hotel that he had worked in when he first came to Edinburgh, the Caledonian, where the interior scenes were shot (the hotel’s exterior, with its clocktower from which Hallam spies on Kate at night, belongs to the Balmoral).

While Myles and Bell were both lauded, perhaps the real star of the film is Edinburgh itself, which Mackenzie has described as ‘part gothic, and part fairytale’. Tim Cornwell, in The Scotsman noted that ‘it’s a film in which Edinburgh and its rooftop views certainly get flattered’. As A.O Scott put it, in The New York Times, Hallam Foe is ‘a nimble, acrobatic tour of Edinburgh, traipsing through narrow alleyways, up drainpipes and across gables and gutters as it follows Hallam on his pathological way’. Later, in 2021, The Scotsman ranked Hallam Foe as the 15th best film set in Edinburgh (first place went to F9 Fast and Furious 9 (aka F9 The Fast Saga) (Justin Lin, 2021), so the list should not be taken too seriously).

Critical reaction to Hallam Foe was very largely positive, although commercially the film may have struggled to break even. A.O. Scottfound much to praise but was not entirely convinced: ‘the main problem with Mister Foe [the film’s US title] is that Hallam’s strangeness is a puzzle only to him and those around him. He’s more of a mystification than a mystery, and never quite creepy enough to risk our not liking him.’ Variety’s Derek Elley was more positive: ‘Tip-top performances, led by young British thesp Jamie Bell, and a deftly handled tone reflecting all the title teen’s confused emotions make Hallam Foe a viewing delight’.

One of the awards won by Hallam Foe was for its soundtrack. This consists of songs by Scottish artists, including Orange Juice, Franz Ferdinand, and James Yorkston, and is worth tracking down.

THE ROCKET POST (2004)

Directed by Stephen Whittaker

Screenplay by James MacInnes, William Morrissey

Leading cast: Ulrich Thomsen (Gerhard Zucher); Shauna Macdonald (Catriona Mackay); Gary Lewis (Jimmy Roach); Eddie Marsan (Heinz Dombrowsky)

Colour, 112 minutes, UK

1938: Europe heads towards war; all German rocket scientists are recalled. Zucher is one, but British intelligence wants to keep him. The Isle of Scarp, Scotland: the local MP holds a meeting, announcing a rocket postal service, to be developed by German scientists who will be housed in a croft owned by Angus, uncle to Catriona. Her father died in WWI, her mother of grief. Zucher and assistant Heinz arrive. Zucher and Catriona become friends. The first rocket tested blows up. Heinz returns to Germany, and Jimmy – a former shipbuilder – helps in his place. The islanders warm to Zucher, although Angus asks him to stay away from Catriona. Zucher tells Catriona he will always love her. A second test is a success. Zucher rejects an offer to go to America. A German naval team attempts to remove him from the island. He refuses to go and is helped by Angus and other islanders; he and Catriona sleep together. Heinz arrives to tell Zucher his sister and her family have been arrested. Zucher goes with Heinz, as Catriona screams for him to stay. When he refuses to cooperate in developing a German rocket programme he thinks of Catriona, who later receives a final letter, as he is executed. The islanders launch a rocket full of letters to Zucher.

Plans for The Rocket Post started grandiosely. Producer Mark Shorrock intended to secure stars of the stature of Sean Connery, or Harvey Keitel. Albert Finney turned the film down, because, Shorrock said, he was not willing to travel to the Outer Hebrides. Shorrock talked of the film as a potential Oscar winner. None of this came to pass. The lead actor is the Dane Ulrich Thomsen, who plays the German scientist on whose exploits the film is (very loosely) based, and the film won only one award, the Grand Prize at the Stony Brook Film Festival (… nope, me neither). The production was rocked when, only a few days before shooting was due to begin, the American owner of Scarp refused permission to film, necessitating a relocation to neighbouring Hebridean island Taransay, and a doubling of the budget to £10m. In 2001 The Scotsman’s James Rampton visited the set: ‘The production has the precision and scale of a major military operation. Fifty builders spent four weeks on Taransay constructing a facsimile of a 1930s Highland village complete with jetty and church hall. Everything from building materials to fresh water had to be transported from Harris on barges and helicopters. But it was worth it: the results are breathtakingly convincing.’

As critics pointed out, The Rocket Post plays fast and loose with history, notwithstanding the ‘based on a true story’ tag. Zucher was deported to Germany by the British and served in the Luftwaffe. The further the film departs from some semblance of veracity, the worse it gets, with absurdity entering after the 80-minute mark. The result is that a strong cast and a great location have been wasted.

The Rocket Post received its premiere in the ‘Screen Machine’, a mobile cinema, on Harris. Reviews were poor; the film was not shown in a cinema in the UK again until four years later, for the first two nights of the newly opened cinema at Lanntair Arts Centre, in Stornoway. Anna Smith reviewed the film twice. In Sight & Sound she wrote ‘Since Whiskey Galore!, Scottish islands have served as a scenic setting for the exploration of community and loyalty – often with a liberal dose of quaint comedy. The Rocket Post aims to fit the mould but falls slightly short of the mark. It’s reasonably successful when attempting fish-out-of water comedy … The romance … feels mechanical, however, and the “based on a true story” narrative alters history to parlay an abrupt, rousing ending.’ In Empire, she gave the film two stars (a ‘sleepy pre-World War II drama’). For the BBC, Stella Papamichael too was underwhelmed: ‘Disappointingly the business of building the rocket … often feels incidental. The stakes only get upped once Hitler issues the order for Zucher to return to the motherland with his research. … that also means taking a sharp left turn into melodrama.’ In the Radio Times Jamie Russell was even less enchanted: ‘historical fact … can’t help this flatly unfunny film as it turns into a lifeless love story’.