TUNES OF GLORY

Year: 1960
UK DVD: Metrodome Distribution
Cast: Alec Guinness, John Mills, Dennis Price, Susannah York, Kay Walsh, John Fraser
Director: Ronald Neame
Country: UK
UK: 103 mins
UK Certificate: PG contains mild violence and language
UK DVD Release Date: 23 July 2007

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.

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.