Glorious tunes

I mentioned the other day that I watched several movies recently that all happen to be on DVD courtesy of Criterion. Another of those is Tunes of Glory, so today you get the full-length review of it.

In a brief introductory scene, Morag Sinclair (Susannah York, who gets an "introducing" credit here) goes to a Scottish regimental military base sometime not long after the end of World War II, where her father Jock (Alec Guinness) is the commander. However, she's not going there to meet him, but Piper Ian Fraser (John Fraser), who is her boyfriend, although Dad doesn't know that.

As for Dad, he's currently the commander, but that's not the case for long. He's about to be replaced by Lt. Col. Barrow (John Mills), who comes from a long line of commanders and is expected to show up tomorrow for the change-of-command ceremony. With that in mind, Maj. Sinclair is holding a get-together for all of his men, who mostly love him; it's the sort of shindig filled with food and, more importantly, whisky.

But Lt. Col. Barrow shows up that night. Not that he's going to take over the command now, but his actions make it very clear that he's going to be a different sort of commander than Maj. Sinclair was. Now, some of it is probably might be necessary; you never know when you'll need military discipline, and having the officers being too chummy with the men can be a problem too.

But Barrow turns out to be much worse. Not only is tea time at a very specific time -- not five minutes early if there's nothing else to be done -- but Barrow complains that the men dance uncouthly. Things like that, and a million other little things. So for the most part, the men are naturally predisposed not to like Barrow, while Sinclair in particular feels like he's lost a part of what has made him who he is.

That dance drilling was in service of a cocktail party with the civilians. After that party, Sinclair decides to take some of his men to a pub. But also there, in another room, is Morag, who is again secretly meeting with Fraser. Dad finally finds out about the relationship, and for no good reason (I'm assuming Morag is 18, but I don't think her age is mentioned). Dad responds by punching Fraser, which would be bad enough among civilians -- but both men are in their uniforms, which makes it something worthy of court-martial. This brings about a change of fate for both Sinclair and Barrow.

Tunes of Glory is a movie that generally gets very high reviews, at least from all the reviews I've seen. Although there is a reasonably deep story here, the film is still more of a character study of both Maj. Sinclair and Lt. Col. Barrow. With that in mind, I have to admit that I had some problems with the movie. It's a bit slow, but the bigger problem is that once Barrow starts putting out the feelers for a court-martial, both he, and even more so Sinclair, start having a substantial change in personality. In Sinclair's case, it comes across as cartoonish and unrealistic.

I suppose, however, that Guinness and Mills were both only dealing with what the script gave them. In that regard, both of them give quite fine performances, which is nothing less than you should expect from them. Tunes of Glory isn't going to be a movie for everybody, but I think it's one that definitely deserves a viewing.