Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Scott Kelly ★★★½

  Defied my expectations. As a mid-forties Patricia Roc vehicle I expected typical Gainsborough Pictures fare (ala Madonna of the Seven Moons) - an overheated melodramatic bodice ripper with a lusty love triangle involving a pair of Cain & Abel sibling types and a pure and pretty convent reared orphan girl. To find anything remotely romantic in this (non-Gainsborough, Sydney & Muriel Box were behind this one) tale of isolation in an unforgiving rugged and desolate environment (the Scottish Isle of Skye of the Inner Hebrides) it’s purely to magnify the pervasive doom and gloom. In Michael Powell Scottish films terms - there’s none of that lyricism and respect for tradition seen in the proto-neo-realist The Edge of the World or the romantic…

• 

  Review by Richmond_Hill ★★★

  Curiously severe clan melodrama, enhanced by steely location photography, but which swells only in scenes of extremis.

  The implied orgasm was a first for British cinema (as was the un-implied nude bathing), and tallies with the pattern of acutenesses that punctuate, but essentially debit, a film with little investment in what got these people to these points. 

  Executions, floggings, murder… Momentous things happen before the next momentous thing happens. But without much motivation the thickheaded groupthink of the families or the personal venalities of everyone else remain givens, not elucidations. With such an expositional stampede you end up looking to the handsomely photographed landscape for respite.

  Still, Britain had a national cinema at this point and was prepared to take risks at scale. Some worked, some didn’t; but the right to try was reason enough.

• 

  Review by loureviews ★★★★

  Enjoyable potbolier set on the Isle of Skye and steeped in Gaelic mythand culture. When pretty Convent girl Mary (Patricia Roc) arrives to work for a rough clan headed by the dependable Finlay Currie she causes havoc by skinny dipping, flirting, and reigniting old feuds between the sons of her employer and the son of the rival clan.

  There's much scrapping in the wilds while Mary feels her sexual excitement stir, and tragedy in that wild and desolate landscape where the girl washes clothes in the river and sleeps on a stone ledge in the dark.

  Duncan MacRae and Maxwell Reed play Currie's sons, dour John and romantic Fergus, while Andrew Crawford their enemy, while John Laurie is the local…

• 

  Review by Luke Thorne ★★★

  David Macdonald’s British melodrama in which the sons of two Scottish families battle over a convent-bred domestic girl (Patricia Roc) on the Isle of Skye in 1900.

  Adapted from the novel of the same name by L. A. G. Strong, the story concerns the MacFarishes and the Macraes, enduring opponents existing on an isolated island in the Western Isles of Scotland.

  Mary Lawson (Patricia Roc) is a Scottish orphan raised in a convent who enters on the weekly steamer to come and labour as a servant to the Macres. Mary is cautioned that she is not to have dealings with the MacFarish family but existing a secluded life she inspires the bond of Will MacFarish (Andrew Crawford), with awful results.…

• 

  Review by PUNQ ★★★

  A lesson in how not to court a woman, as a young girl gets sent to a remote island where all the men are total creeps, some worse than others, making life miserable for her. It's a story created to provoke anger and build to a justified brutal ending. For what it was and was trying to do, it felt like they put enough effort into the production to achieve its purpose.

• 

  Review by Graefin Dracula

  Wuthering Heights á la Wicker Man

  Wenn sich Heathcliff und Hindley auf der Insel Summerisle um eine Frau streiten…

• 

  Review by Calum Iain MacIver ★★★★

  Eerie and melancholic tale of lust and murder set on the rugged coast of the Isle of Skye in the year 1900. The story is set in motion with the arrival of orphan Mary (Patricia Roc) from Glasgow who has come to The Island to live with the dour MacRae family – patriarch Hector (Finlay Currie) and his two sons, John (Duncan Macrae) and Fergus (Maxwell Reed). Both MacRae boys are soon vying for Mary’s attentions. To complicate matters the MacRaes are feuding with clan rivals the MacFarishs and when Mary starts taking an interest in Willie MacFarish (Andrew Crawford) tensions build to a murderous climax. Set against the mountainous sea coast of Skye and the superstitions of the island…

• 

  Review by George White

  Scotch gothic

• 

  Review by Cate ★★½

  This contains the funniest gang execution method I've ever seen on film – to be lowered into the sea wearing a tam o' shanter with a fish strapped around your head, to be swooped upon by a comically oversized seagull.

  A bad film, but Pat Roc looks phenomenally gorgeous throughout, batting back against Scottish island creeps.

  If I lived for a thousand years and there was no other man but you, I would still spit every time I saw your shadow. Now do you understand?

• 

  Review by Giles_L ★★★★

  Feuding doesn't get feudier than this. No one can harbour a grudge quite like a Scottish clansman and here the Macraes and McFarishes go at it full kilt and thistle in what must be one of the grimmest films ever made.

  That's not to suggest this isn't a great film, it is. The backdrop of Skye is as breathtaking as the doom ridden lives of its inhabitants is miserable, perfectly personified by John Laurie's 'you're all doomed' Dugald and his gift of second sight.

  Important lesson sassenachs. Don't upset a highlander or you may end up bobbing in the sea with a fish strapped to your head whilst waiting for the beak of a swooping bird to crack your skull. Those Hebrideans don't mess about.

• 

  Review by Reza Said ★★★★

  The Brothers (David MacDonald, 1947) 8/10

  A young orphan (Patricia Roc) from a convent arrives on a remote Scottish island to work as a servant in the household of one of the local clans and causes upheaval amongst the men. She comes between two rival clans when she shows interest in a young man which results in tragedy and betrayal. Atmospheric film, shot on location, has Roc cast against type in a story involving lust, murder and malevolence which is in sharp contrast to the stunning locale with its bright skies and spectacular landscapes of mountains and lakes. The mystery and superstition of ancient gaelic traditions is horrifically captured in a scene involving an unusual form of execution on the…

• 

  Review by wafflesonface ★★★★

  Four stars for insult scene alone.