Product Description
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Whiskey Galore!It is 1943 and the tiny remote Hebridean
island of Todday is plunged into the depths of despair. Everyone
is affected. Spirits are at zero - for Todday is without whisky.
Then a ship founders on the rocks, and the islanders guide the
crew to safety. The ship's captain and mate reveal that they had
on board a cargo of 50,000 cases of whisky bound for America.
Held up for a day because it is the Sabbath, the islanders
eventually succeed in removing a considerable a of the cargo
and the dawn breaks with a rosy glow on a brighter, happier
island. But the whisky does not last forever... Inspired by a
true story. The Maggie"Maggie" is one of the fifty-odd puffer
boats which chug among the Western Isles of Scotland. Squat,
unprepossessing, and badly in need of paint, she is destined for
the scrap yard unless her skipper can get her repaired. This
seems a forlorn hope - until Mr. Pusey makes his mistake. Mr.
Pusey works for the high-pressure American businessman, Calvin B.
Marshall, who has a valuable cargo to be shipped to one of the
isles. And Mr. Pusey's disastrous error is in allowing, through a
misunderstanding, the cargo to be entrusted to the humble
'Maggie' with her crew of four. Originally released in the US as
High and Dry.
Review
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As usual for Ealing, the picture is brimming with
delightful character portraits, from a dying man's (James
Anderson) resurrection with the arrival of the stolen liquor, to
mama's boy George's (Gordon Jackson) hilarious defiance of his
stern, religious mother (Jean Cadell) after finding courage in
several glasses of the newly-opened whiskey. Though a comedy, the
film has exceptionally dramatic monochrome photography by Gerald
Gibbs, images so good as to evoke memories of another classic of
British cinema, Michael Powell's The Edge of the World (1937).
The mostly Scottish cast includes perennial favorites like James
Robertson Justice, Gordon Jackson, and Duncan Macrae (Finlay
Currie narrates), but also eccentrically sexy Joan Greenwood. -
Stuart Galbraith IV, DVD Talk
Together with Robert Hamer's Kind Hearts and Coronets and Henry
Cornelius' Passport to Pimlico, Whisky Galore! established the
Ealing Studios' reputation for producing high quality British
comedies. - Svet Atanasov, Blu-ray.com
[A] convivial little classic. --Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
The result is the sweetest, smartest and most joyous of all the
Ealing comedies. - Tom Huddleston, Time Out
Another happy demonstration of that peculiar knack British movie
makers have for striking a rich and universally appealing comic
vein in the most unexpected and seemingly insular situations. -
Thomas Pryor, The New York Times
Out of this excellent idea, which less skilled hands might have
reduced to farce, the British moviemakers have spun a tight
little comedy of pure gold. --Time Magazine
One of three Ealing comedies released in 1949 (the others were
Passport to Pimlico and Kind Hearts and Coronets), and remains by
far the sharpest, freshest and most resonant. - Marc Lee, The
Daily Telegraph
Blessed be Mr. Mackendrick and the canniness of the Scots.
Blessed be Michael Balcon and his Ealing Studios. For the smooth
combination of all these factors that is represented in this film
has resulted in a jolly entertainment that is as bracing as the
Hebridean air. Mr. Mackendrick has stuck to the real outdoors for
the better part of his picture, and you can feel it, all the way
through. It is downright intoxicating. And High and Dry is a
hearty, wholesome film. - Bosley Crowther, The New York Times
Alexander Mackendrick always managed to bring an undertone of
social reality to the comic fantasies he directed for Britain's
Ealing Studios, and for that reason they remain in the mind much
longer than those of his colleagues. This 1954 effort stars the
Hollywood actor Paul Douglas as an American millionaire who has
hired an ancient cargo boat to haul a ain of expensive
furniture to his new vacation home on a Scottish island;
Mackendrick satirizes the American's bluster and the willful
inefficiency of the cranky Scottish crew without compromising the
warmth of the utopian dream the quest for a safe harbor from the
franticness of modern life that motivates the action. --Dave
Kehr, The Chicago Reader