Tunes of Glory

Alec Guinness In One Of His Best Roles
A clash of wills and personalities between two men, one a psychologically scarred idealist, the other driven by ego and his own needs to the point of cruelty, is examined in the peacetime military drama, “Tunes of Glory,” directed by Ronald Neame and starring Alec Guinness and John Mills. Major Jock Sinclair (Guinness) is the acting Colonel of a Scottish regiment, but as the story begins he has been notified that he has been passed over for promotion and his replacement, Lieutenant Colonel Basil Barrow (Mills) is en route to take command. Sinclair is a soldier’s soldier, a man’s man loved and respected (with some qualifications) by his men. He has clawed his way up through the ranks, was once a piper (he would’ve been happy as a Pipe Major, in fact, but Hitler-- as he says at one point-- “Changed all that”), and feels strongly that he should have been made Colonel of the regiment. Barrow, on the other hand, is an aristocrat and a third...

An intense look at the psychological aftermath of war.
This is a great movie. The time: immediately following the Second World War. The place: Scotland, specifically the Scotts Highland Regiment. The Regiment has returned from hard combat in North Africa and Europe, and once again is esconced in its barracks in the Scottish Highlands--the place in which it has been headquartered for over three hundred years. The Acting Commanding Officer is Col. Jock Sinclair (Alec Guiness), a rough, uneducated man from the lower classes who worked his way up to Colonel from the ranks. Sinclair got his promotion in the desert, fighting Rommel, and one senses that these experiences have created strong bonds of friendship between Sinclair and certain other officers in the battalion. Now higher headquarters has assigned a new Commanding Officer to the battalion--Col. Basil Barrow, a university-educated man from the upper classes who comes from a long line of officers who served with, and indeed commanded, the battalion. But Barrow, for all that, is...

Whisky for thems that like it. For thems that dont, whisky!
"Tunes of Glory" is everything you might want from this type of movie. Full of rough-hewn Scots drinking life with the same enthusiasm as they drink their whisky, "Tunes of Glory" plays wistfully with the Scottish stereotypes of good natured, dancing and singing soldiers of a highland regiment. There are tunes a'plenty, and twirling kilts and bagpipes as well. A story of post-war peacetime soldiers, one cannot call it a war movie or but it is military in flavor,with pipes and drum corp assembled.

In addition to the Scottish pageantry is a surprisingly deep storyline and some of Sir Alec Guinness's and Sir John Mills's best acting, which is saying a lot about those two giants of film. Both play against type, with Guinness's surprising turn as red-haired Jock Sinclair, the course and gutter-born Major who seeks to be Battalion Commander, and Mill's emotionally unstable yet straight-laced Battalion Commander Basil Barrow, the very opposite of the spirited garrison who...

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