A Film Canon

Like The Lost Weekend, Whisky Galore! deflects alcoholic into aesthetic experience, albeit in a beautiful, rather than sublime, and comic, rather than dramatic, register, literally identifying it with the topography of a small island in the Outer Hebrides. On the one hand, the shipwreck of fifty thousand cases of whisky ensures that "the water of life" is fused with the surrounding ocean, producing a second Flood that corresponds to the restorative, medicinal function consistently ascribed to the drink, as well as to the solemnity with which the wreck is contemplated - a common liturgical denominator between the island's Anglican and Roman Catholic demographics (although this dimension is admittedly more prominent in Compton Mackenzie's original novel). On the other hand, the presence of fanatical Home Guard Captain Paul Waggett (Basil Radford) necessitates hiding the appropriated whisky in every available nook and cranny - both architectural (taps, cupboards, wells) and topographical (culminating with an exquisitely photographed seaside cave) - as well as putting it to eccentric use, most notably as petrol in a chase sequence that both elaborates the island's spectacular ruggedness, and provides a humorous confirmation of Waggett's belief that WWII will find its logical conclusion in a Hebridean theatre. This, in turn, unites the island's disparate interests, drawing attention to the minutiae that previously distinguished them, while Waggett's conspicuous Englishness identifies their shared Scottish - and occasionally Gaelic - register with their project, and the landscape that it elaborates.