Tunes of Glory

This is a film that I’d never seen, partly because I’d always confused it with Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, from the same era and with a similarly military setting, though a different war and nationality. When Criterion released a DVD a few years ago, I put it on my Netflix queue and it very gradually made its way to the top. Ronald Neame smoothly directed this story of a Highland regiment in the years after World War II, but it is really a showcase for two giants of British acting. Alec Guinness is a crude hard-drinking Scot with flame-red hair, who has risen from the ranks to achieve command, only to be succeeded by an Oxford-educated martinet played by John Mills. Our sympathies waver between the two, until both are destroyed from within. The process is never less than interesting to watch, but the resolution is not fully satisfying, rendering the film well-made but not especially significant. (1960, dvd.) *7*