SYNOPSIS: In Ronald Neame’s Tunes of Glory, the incomparable Alec Guinness inhabits the role of Jock Sinclair—a whiskey-drinking, up-by-the-bootstraps commanding officer of a peacetime Scottish battalion. Sinclair is a lifetime military man, who expects respect and loyalty from his men. But when Basil Barrow (John Mills, winner of the Best Actor award at the 1960 Venice Film Festival)—an educated, by-the-book scion of a traditionally military family—enters the scene as Sinclair’s replacement, the two men become locked in a fierce battle for control of the battalion and the hearts and minds of its men. Based on the novel by James Kennaway and featuring flawless performances by Guinness and Mills, Tunes of Glory uses the rigidly stratified hierarchy of military life as a jumping-off point to examine the institutional contradictions and class divisions of English society, resulting in an unexpectedly moving drama.
| Major D.S.O. M.M. Jock Sinclair | Alec Guinness |
| Lt. Col. Basil Barrow | John Mills |
| Major Charles Scott, M.C. | Dennis Price |
| Mary Titterington | Kay Walsh |
| Cpl. Piper Ian Fraser | John Fraser |
| Morag Sinclair | Susannah York |
| Capt. Jimmy Cairns, M.C. | Gordon Jackson |
| Pipe Major Duncan MacLean | Duncan Macrae |
| R.S.M. Riddick | Percy Herbert |
| Capt. Eric Simpson | Allan Cuthbertson |
| Major Dusty Miller | Paul Whitsun-Jones |
| Major Hugo MacMillan | Gerald Harper |
| Captain Alec Rattray | Richard Leech |
| 2nd Lt. David MacKinnon | Peter McEnery |
| Director | Ronald Neame |
| Producer | Albert Fennell |
| Executive producer | Colin Lesslie |
| Music composed and conducted by | Malcolm Arnold |
| Screenplay | James Kennaway |
| Based on the novel by | James Kennaway |
| Director of photography | Arthur Ibbetson |
| Production design | Wilfred Shingleton |
| Film editor | Anne V. Coates |
By February 16, 2004
Ronald Neame’s Tunes of Glory, which was widely admired when it was first released, has subsequently kept a low profile. This says more about critical attitudes and British film culture than it does about Read more »
By April 10, 1989
Two years after The Horse’s Mouth, in 1960, director Ronald Neame cast Alec Guinness in his film, Tunes of Glory, based on a book by James Kennaway. The story concerns the battle for control of a peace-time Read more »
By July 22, 2010
April 21, 2011
British filmmaker Ronald Neame, the director of such Criterion titles as The Horse’s Mouth, Tunes of Glory, and Hopscotch (not to mention The Poseidon Adventure), and the producer behind David Lean’s Read more »
