TUNES OF GLORY DIRECTED BY RONALD NEAME CRITERION ANADIAN TELEVISION was a great ...

GLORY DIRECTED BY RONALD NEAME CRITERION

ANADIAN TELEVISION was a great ambassador of international cinema for anyone growing up in Detroit, across the river from Windsor, Ontario. Tunes of Glory was frequently broadcast, but its representation of Scottish culture seemed more obscure than Red Wings hockey games and curling tournaments. Its claim to international attention isn't just ethnic; this drama about a power struggle between officers in the Scottish regiment features one of the most impressive acting displays in English-language movies.

Alec Guinness portrays Major Jock Sinclair with a macho swagger Paul Hornung would envy. His rousing voice and red-haired vitality win the loyalty of the men in his regiment, until Colonel Basil Barrow (John Mills) arrives to restore the outpost with rectitude and orderliness. This tug-of-war, based on a novel by James Kennaway, examines peacetime notions of authority and masculinity. Guinness and Mills put on a display of competing ethics—and of contrasting acting styles. Mills won the Best Actor prize at the 1960 Venice Film Festival for a characterization of believable sensitivity and repose but really, the astonishing sight is Guinness, in 1960 at the peak of his international acclaim, an emotional virtuoso.

The famous confrontation where Barrow worries to Sinclair about the feasibility of court-martialing him for striking a fellow officer sums up the rivalry. Sinclair (in Guinness' uncanny burr) asks/accuses, "Are you a man or a book?" The line has a remarkable aural resonance due to Guinness' mellifluous delivery. His musical voice is capable of harsh definition, which also makes the line a challenge to prevailing notions of manly behavior. It is a carry-over of Guinness' Oscar-winning role in The Bridge on the River Kwai (as well as John Ford's Fort Apache), but Tunes of Glory has the special interest of concentrating on the specific British traits of Scottish tradition. Canadians understandably took this movie to heart; the cast and director Ronald Neame went to the heart of that country's cultural heritage.

With bagpipes and kilts and ginger-haired theatrics, Tunes of Glory evokes one of Neame's better-known movies, the 1969 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. They're his Scottish dramas. Guinness' Jock Sinclair could be related to Maggie Smith's eccentric schoolteacher who exhorts about "the stuff I am made of!" Both films are tributes to Neame's good taste in gallant acting styles and singular characterizations. Guinness' Sinclair will shock anyone who only knows him as Obi-Wan Kenobi. His delicate revelation of a troubled macho man's soul is the kind of acting Kevin Spacey strives for. And no wonder. The only wonder is that such a stout-thewed Scottish archetype would eventually give way to the twee expressions of a Scottish band like Belle and Sebastian.