Whisky Galore! (1949) on Netflix
Wartime rationing has left the Scottish island of Todday without whisky. When a freighter carrying 50,000 cases runs aground, the islanders try to salvage it before Captain Waggett can stop them.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb7.1/107,445 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
Todday, an isolated Scottish island, has run dry: wartime rationing has emptied its whisky supply, and gloom settles over the inhabitants. Sergeant Odd comes back on leave to court Peggy, the shopkeeper's daughter, while her sister Catriona is engaged to George Campbell, a schoolteacher whose stern mother refuses her consent. Then in fog the cargo ship SS Cabinet Minister goes aground just off Todday and starts to sink. The Biffer and Sammy MacCodrun row out to help and come back with the news that its hold holds 50,000 cases of whisky. Captain Waggett, the English Home Guard commander, tells Odd to stand guard over the cargo. Joseph Macroon remarks that by old custom a man cannot marry without a rèiteach, a betrothal ceremony at which whisky must be served.
Cast
- Gabrielle Bluntas Catriona Macroon
- James Woodburnas Roderick MacRurie
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Whisky Galore! (1949)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The story came from a real wartime incident: the cargo ship SS Politician ran aground off Eriskay in 1941, and islanders from Eriskay and South Uist, hearing it carried 22,000 cases of whisky, rescued up to 7,000 cases before it sank. Customs officers Charles McColl and Ivan Gledhill raided and arrested many of them.
- Michael Balcon, the head of the studio, was unimpressed by the initial cut of the film, so one of Ealing's directors, Charles Crichton, added footage and re-edited it before release.
- It was filmed on the island of Barra, where the weather was so poor that the production over-ran its 10-week schedule by five weeks and the film went £20,000 over budget.
- Whisky Galore! was released in the US in December 1949 under the title Tight Little Island, because of American restrictions on the use of the names of alcoholic drinks in film titles.
- Alastair Sim was offered the role of Joseph Macroon in the film, but turned it down to avoid being typecast as "a professional Scotsman".
- The studio had to send out three cases of dummy whisky bottles for use as props, because the island was short of the real equivalent thanks to rationing.
