Outstanding film. I first saw it on US television in the 1970s, PBS, I think. Reputedly the British did not show it on TV after its initial showing in the 1960s for about three decades. The subject matter was perhaps controversial. The Jacobite side is not presented in a romantic White Heather Club fashion - most of the leadership are depicted as inept and the figurehead of their aspirations speaks with a heavy French accent (I do not know if this was true of the historical Prince Charlie). They are up against a British government army defending the Hanoverian dynasty, an army brutal but efficient (its soldiers are not going hungry, unlike their Jacobite opponents). An international conflict in fact, with Scots on both sides, a French-tinted Jacobite prince, Irish troops in French service and an officer in the British Army, perhaps meant to be from Hanover, who makes a mocking comment in German that "they are throwing stones at us", as Highlanders on their right flank, unlike their left, fail to get to close quarters. And all this in a field near Inverness. Sometimes it was painfully obvious that there were very few extras, but Watkins did far better with his very limited resources than many directors with far bigger budgets and an army of extras have done.
Review of Culloden
