‘Offers more hope than any other British film of the 1980s so far’: Local Hero reviewed in 1983

There is, of course, no more certain candidate for disappointment than an eagerly awaited follow-up. And it is doubtful that many films have been more eagerly awaited than Local Hero (Fox): David Puttnam’s first feature film production since Chariots of Fire, which was supposed to set the British film industry back on the road to viability, and Bill Forsyth’s follow-up to Gregory’s Girl, which raised a whole different set of hopes about British film-making. In some respects, the future of British cinema depends on its ability to merge the Puttnam tradition with the Forsyth one.

For much of its running time, Local Hero does the job in a way that is exhilarating to watch. The real problem comes with the appearance of the half-acknowledged ghost of another kind of cinema altogether: the ghost of Ealing.

Echoes of Whisky Galore! abound, both in terms of theme (a small Scottish community banding together against an outside threat, in this case the plan by an American company to buy up a village port and turn the site into an oil refinery) and in terms of incidental details and characters. But they can only serve to indicate how totally films and film audiences have changed since 1949.

While Whisky Galore! could still make contact with a genuine sense of traditional community, Local Hero can only do so self-consciously: no one seems more aware of the roles that are being played than the inhabitants of the village of Ferness. And while Basil Radford’s Waggett in the Ealing film was a pompous authoritarian who could be thwarted with relative ease, Burt Lancaster’s Happer, the tycoon behind the deal in Local Hero, represents power – almost boundless power, the power to destroy the community of Ferness. His conversion to ecological camaraderie at the end leaves untouched the threat (or the opportunity, or both) posed to Scotland by Knox Oil and Gas, and for that matter leaves suspended all the issues that Forsyth’s screenplay has deftly toyed with in the first part of the film.

It is, in fact, the first half of Local Hero that really raises one’s hopes that the British film industry has got beyond its rebirth trauma. Forsyth’s screenplay and direction, Chris Menges’ stunning camerawork and a series of nicely judged performances from Burt Lancaster, Peter Riegert, Denis Lawson and Peter Capaldi achieve the almost forgotten ideal of a British film that is thematically dense, deals with serious issues, is funny, has well-developed characters, can handle running gags and gives off a general sense of confident control.

The roles of producer and director combine to the immense overall benefit of the film. The whizz-kid efficiency of Macintyre (Riegert), the young Houston executive, is nicely played off against the gauche eagerness of his Scottish counterpart, Danny Oldsen (Capaldi), and the contrast is compounded by the fact that Oldsen, despite his name, is a genuine Scot while Macintyre, despite his, is a Hungarian immigrant whose father adopted the name at Ellis Island because he thought it sounded American. The irony is given a further twist by the introduction of a Black minister in the Ferness kirk (Chris Asante), with the echt name of Macpherson and a fairly authentic Scottish accent.

Similar hopes are raised by the two sub-plots, involving Marina (Jenny Seagrove), the oceanographer with more than a touch of the mermaid, who comes to obsess Danny; and the movements of things in the sky which is Happer’s obsession and soon becomes Mac’s, leading to one supreme visual joke where a light moving mysteriously through the sky turns out to be, not the expected comet that it is Happer’s dream to see, but Happer himself flying in by helicopter to be ready for it.

Only with the introduction of Happer’s analyst, whose methods of treatment extend to obscene phone calls late at night, does one get the impression that Forsyth is striving a little too fussily for a richly textured film. In general, he manages to weave together both an acute awareness of the politics of Scottish oil exploration, and an unsentimental look at Scottish provincial life: Urquhart (Lawson), the hotel owner, is also the local solicitor, with an indication that he is ‘Licensed to deal in game’ affixed to his office plaque, and a taxi service for tourists in the summer.

Ultimately, however, the affirmation of the superiority of the traditional culture over the money-oriented one turns out to be rather twee, if not actually apologetic. Mac, back in Houston, turns aside from his Porsche and his luxurious lifestyle to view his snapshots of Ferness and his collection of seashells, then puts through a call to the village’s harbour-side red phone box.

In retrospect, it is possible to indicate the moment at which Local Hero dodges its commitments. During the ceilidh, the village’s traditional highspot, Mac becomes progressively drunker and increasingly disillusioned with his mission. The callow ceilidh band suddenly abandons its country and western repertoire for a tin whistle lament. The camera tracks along the front of the stage, and the possibility of a triumphant tying together of all the themes is briefly glimpsed.

Instead, however, we shift rather abruptly outside to the introduction of the character of the old beachcomber, Ben Knox (Fulton Mackay), who will eventually block the ambitions of his namesake oil company by sheer folksy cussedness. And the whole mixture, for all its enormous skill, topples back into the clutches of a certain kind of British cinema. Though Local Hero undoubtedly offers more hope than any other British film of the 1980s so far, the question of whether it is possible to merge the two traditions remains sadly open. 

► Local Hero returns to select UK cinemas from 19 May.