In January 1948,[4] at the officers' mess of a Highland battalion, Jock Sinclair announces that this is his last day as acting commanding officer. Sinclair, who is still only a major despite having been in command (as a brevet lieutenant colonel) since the battalion's last full colonel died during the North Africa Campaign, is to be replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Basil Barrow. Although Sinclair led the battalion through the remainder of the war, winning a DSO as he took it "from Dover to Berlin" (He also holds a Military Medal, a medal only awarded to Other Ranks), Brigade HQ considers Barrow – whose ancestor founded the battalion – a more appropriate peacetime commanding officer.
Colonel Barrow arrives a day early and finds the officers dancing. He declines sharing a whisky with Sinclair, taking a soft drink instead. Sinclair enlisted as a bandsman in Glasgow and rose through the ranks, Barrow came from Oxford University. He served with the battalion in 1933. Assigned to "special duties", he has lectured at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Sinclair was in Barlinnie Prison's cooler for being drunk and disorderly one night in 1933. Barrow was a prisoner of war, and Sinclair belittles the experience – "officers' privileges and amateur dramatics". Barrow, who was a prisoner of the Japanese, replies that Barlinnie would have been preferable. At 3 am, Sinclair and Major Charlie Scott are drinking, alone. Frustrated, Sinclair says: "I've acted Colonel, I should be Colonel, and by God... I bloody well will be Colonel!"
Meanwhile, Morag, Sinclair's daughter, secretly meets an enlisted piper, Corporal Piper Ian Fraser. Barrow passes orders designed to instill strict battalion discipline. Particularly resented is an order that all officers take lessons in "proper" Scottish country dancing to prepare for the cocktail party Barrow plans for 20 February, the first postwar official barracks party. Men who have been raucously dancing for decades are insulted and angry at being told not to raise their arms overhead. The townspeople enjoy the party, but then the dancing becomes rowdy and ladies are tossed about. Furious, Barrow ends the party. He flees in a jeep, accompanied by Captain Cairns, in whom he confides. The thought of leading this battalion kept him alive while the Japanese drowned him repeatedly. Cairns says that Barrow triumphed and survived; Barrow replies that he did not "survive".
Sinclair finds Corporal Fraser with Morag in a pub and punches him. "Bashing a corporal" is an offence, and Barrow decides to begin a court-martial. Sinclair persuades Barrow to back down, promising support in the future. Afterwards, Sinclair and other officers sit apart from Barrow and virtually ignore him in the mess. In the billiard room, Scott says that Sinclair is really in charge and suggests that Barrow join the other acolytes. Distraught, Barrow leaves. Jock and others join Charlie in the billiard room. A gunshot then echoes. Barrow has shot himself in the tub room.
Distressed, Sinclair explains what must be done to the young officer of the day. He later calls a meeting to announce his plans for a grandiose funeral, complete with a march through the town in which the pipers will play "tunes of glory". When one officer points to the manner of Barrow's death, Sinclair insists that it was not suicide, but murder, he being the murderer and the other senior officers accomplices. While Sinclair loses himself in his vision of the cortège, all leave, except for Cairns and Scott. Sinclair buries his head in his tam and sobs, "I'm fashed!...Oh my babies. Take me home". They support him from the barracks, and Cairns rides with him as he is driven away, officers and men saluting as he passes. Bagpipes play as snow begins to fall.
The film was initially to be made at Ealing Studios, with Michael Relph as producer and Jack Hawkins playing Sinclair. At the time that it was at Ealing, Kenneth Tynan, then working as a script reader, criticized the first draft screenplay as having "too much army-worship in it". That view was shared by director Alexander Mackendrick. By the time Kennaway rewrote the script, Ealing had lost interest and Hawkins was no longer available. The film was then picked up by the independent producer Colin Lesslie, who interested Mills in the project.[4]
Accounts differ as to how the leading roles were cast. Mills wrote that he and Guinness "tossed for it", while Guinness recalled that he had originally been offered the role of Barrow but preferred Sinclair. The role of Barrow might have been too close to that of Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai. Sinclair has been described as "anti-Nicholson".[4]
Tunes of Glory was shot at Shepperton Studios in London. The film's sets were designed by the art directorWilfred Shingleton. Establishing location shots were done at Stirling Castle in Stirling, Scotland. Stirling Castle is the Regimental Headquarters of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders[5] but in fact James Kennaway served with the Gordon Highlanders. Although the production was initially offered broad co-operation to film within the castle from the commanding officer there, as long as it didn't disrupt the regiment's [Argyll's] routine, after seeing a lurid paperback cover for Kennaway's book, that co-operation evaporated, and the production was only allowed to shoot distant exterior shots of the castle.[3]
Director Ronald Neame worked with Guinness on The Horse's Mouth (1958), and a number of other participants were also involved in both films, including actress Kay Walsh, cinematographer Arthur Ibbetson and editor Anne V. Coates.[3] The film was Susannah York's film debut.[5]
The film was generally well received by critics, the acting in particular garnering praise.
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "In Tunes of Glory, Ronald Neame and his writer James Kennaway have sketched in the corruptions, tensions and intrigues of life in a Highland Regiment's officers' quarters with enough acerbity to make an interesting melodrama. Unfortunately one cannot put it higher than that. It is not merely that they have thrown away a good idea on an embarrassingly sentimental ending; they have lowered the temperature throughout by throwing in such irrelevancies as a thread or two of conventionally handled love interest ... and some stagy exhibitions of quaint humour on the part of the lower ranks. False touches and caricature abound; sympathies switch disconcertingly from side to side as the plot, rather than the disappointingly underdeveloped characters, dictates. Nevertheless there are goodish supporting performances from Dennis Price, Gordon Jackson and Duncan Macrae; all the scenes in which Barrow makes his presence newly felt are observed with brisk authority; and the sets are suitably claustrophobic. Though Alec Guinness (made up to look alarmingly like Stan Laurel) can only intermittently suggest a tough, blaspheming old campaigner, John Mills succeeds in establishing the gradual cracking of Barrow’s confidence with a nervous conviction not always evident in the parts written."[6]
Writing in Esquire, Dwight Macdonald called Tunes of Glory a "limited but satisfying tale", and wrote that "it is one of those films, like Zinnemann's Sundowners (1960), which are of little interest cinematically and out of fashion thematically (no sex, no violence, no low life) and yet manage to be very good entertainment".[7]
The film was praised by Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, who wrote "Not only do Alec Guinness and John Mills superlatively adorn the two top roles in this drama of professional military men, but also every actor, down to the walk-ons, acquits himself handsomely."[8]
Variety called Ronald Neame's direction "crisp and vigorous", and said that Mills had a "tough assignment" to appear opposite Guinness, "particularly in a fundamentally unsympathetic role, but he is always a match for his co-star".[9]
The film's screenplay, and especially the final scene showing Sinclair's breakdown, was criticised by some critics at the time of release. One critic wrote in Sight & Sound that the ending was "inexcusable" and that the scene is "far less one of tragic remorse than gauchely contrived emotionalism".[4]
Tunes of Glory has a 73% rating on the Rotten Tomatoes review aggregation site.[10]
Awards and honours
James Kennaway, who adapted the screenplay from his novel, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, but lost to Elmer Gantry. It also received numerous BAFTA nominations, including Best Film, Best British Film, Best British Screenplay and Best Actor nominations for both Guinness and Mills.[11]
The film was the official British entry at the 1960 Venice Film Festival, and John Mills won the Best Actor award there.[5] That same year the film was named "Best Foreign Film" by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.[12]
Adaptations
Tunes of Glory was adapted for BBC Radio 4's Monday Play by B.C. Cummins in April 1976.
It was adapted for the stage by Michael Lunney, who directed a production of it which toured Britain in 2006.[13][14]
Home video
Tunes of Glory is available on DVD from Criterion and Metrodome. It was released on Blu-ray by Criterion in December 2019 with a 4K digital restoration.[citation needed]
Legacy
Alfred Hitchcock called Tunes of Glory "one of the best films ever made", Neil Sinyard writes in The Cinema of Britain and Ireland, "so it is curious that the film rarely finds a place in the established canon of great British films". It was not included in the list of 100 greatest British films of the century compiled by the British Film Institute in 1999. Sinyard observes that the film came too late to be part of the spate of popular 1950s British war films, and was too dark to be part of that genre. He notes that it seemed "slightly old-fashioned" when compared to British New Wave films that came out at the time, such as Room at the Top.[4]
