The Western Isles

(Terence Egan Bishop/1941/UK)

A 15 minute short about Harris Tweed making on the Hebrides with the story of a young sailor returning from war thrown in for dramatic effect. It shows Flaherty’s continued influence at that time in creating stories to document some aspect of a community’s way of life. The family are all islanders but are not related thus the realism of some scenes is diminished by the sense of people reciting lines. However the shots of the tweed making are brilliant to watch and are obviously more naturalistic. The scene of the women singing as they pat down the material to soften it (waulking) is especially good. The background drama of the son, surviving a German submarine attack and rowing a lifeboat hundreds of miles home, ties the film in as a wartime spirit raiser. The son’s story is erroneously linked to the story of Angus Murray who similarly survived a submarine attack but that happened in 1942 a year after the film was made. Its value in capturing the old fashioned methods of production is obvious now but at the time it was blocked from distribution by the Ministry of Information as it fitted with Goebbels claim of the British being frivolous and hanging onto primitive ways of living.

The Western Isles on Scotland on Screen

(2.5/5)