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Forsyth's Local Hero is the noted descendant, though a deeper affinity is with Buñuel's concurrent Illusion Travels by Streetcar. "Freedom of operation" suits the wily old Scottish skipper (Alex Mackenzie), so much so that he finds himself in danger of losing his license and with it the eponymous puffy, a rusty vagabond of a barge. Escape from the junk heap lies with the American tycoon in Glasgow (Paul Douglas), who needs a valuable cargo hauled to a private island and endures a full catalog of irritations at the hands of the crew. "Why make a career out of my difficulties?" On one side "the American way, everything in a rush" and on the other the canny locals who slow down at every opportunity for a pint, both are grist for Alexander Mackendrick's satirical mill in a gentle variant of Whisky Galore! The drift down the canal has a pit stop for poaching, the British assistant (Hubert Gregg) is sent to sort things out and instead gets arrested with pheasant in hand. The coast has its own surrealism, the screen is blanched with fog and then clears to reveal the vessel stranded by the low tide, the Yank climbs out and ambles off the flat void. "I'm developing a very unusual sense of humor." The destruction of the pier is a symphonic little set-piece of groaning wood, mooing oxen and cackling geese, the birthday shindig warms international relations with a joke shared with the islander who just turned one hundred. Above all, the mediating gaze of the cabin boy (Tommy Kearins), already a striking Mackendrick motif. The comparison is to A High Wind in Jamaica, "what you might call a seaman's instinct." With James Copeland, Abe Barker, Dorothy Allison, Meg Buchanan, Andrew Keir, Geoffrey Keen, and Fiona Clyne. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |