Sun sets on movie version of Scots masterpiece

IT IS one of Scottish literature’s great masterpieces, while he is one of Britain’s most acclaimed film directors. Sunset Song and Terence Davies looked like a dream combination, but plans for a film of the Lewis Grassic Gibbon classic have collapsed because of a complete lack of interest in England.

Davies managed to secure finance from Scottish and international backers but was turned down by the BBC, Channel 4 and the UK Film Council.

There was great excitement when Davies brought X-Files star Gillian Anderson to Glasgow in 1999 when the city doubled for the New York of 100 years ago in his adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel The House of Mirth.

Davies’s films have never been blockbusters, but it did reasonable business, grossing $3m in the US, and collected excellent reviews and several awards, including one for best British independent film of the year.

The package of Davies and Grassic Gibbon looked even more enticing, and Scottish Screen allocated 500,000 of lottery money towards the projected 7m budget two years ago.

Although now regarded with nostalgia and studied in schools, Grassic Gibbon’s portrait of life in the rural north-east was controversial when it first appeared in 1932, because of its themes of incest, suicide, infanticide and alcoholism. A 1971 BBC adaptation became a landmark in Scottish television drama.

The book was written in broad Doric dialect, but Davies watered down the language in his screenplay to make it accessible for international audiences, and he and producer Bob Last were prepared to cast an American actress, such as Kirsten Dunst, to ensure international backing. But it was English support that proved the stumbling block.

"It is a fantastic novel, which is what drove us to try and make the film," said Last. "In fact generally the response to the script has been very good.

"It was a film that was still very distinctively Terry’s vision, but reached out to bigger audiences both in the UK and globally.

"We had international money, but neither the Film Council nor Channel 4 nor the BBC could be persuaded to get involved." He could not explain why they turned it down.

"This would have been a major film for Scotland. Until we figure out a way of getting another partner in the UK then it’s on the back-burner," he said. "We don’t see in the short-term a way of closing finance without further UK investment. It’s very frustrating."

Last year the respected film magazine Sight & Sound ran an editorial lamenting the difficulties that British ‘auteurs’ like Davies face in getting films made. "You can’t imagine the French industry leaving one of its best filmmakers in the doldrums in this way," it said.

Celia Stevenson of Scottish Screen said: "I don’t think there’s any difficulty in getting a good Scottish novel made into television. I think there’s possibly more of a difficulty getting one made into a film. But I have absolutely no idea why."

Ian Thomson of the UK Film Council said judgments on scripts were "subjective", but refuted any suggestion of a bias against Scottish literary classics. "It’s not about the type of film. The Film Council tries to make as wide a range of films as possible.

"Not all great novels are able to transfer that easily to the big screen. I think it’s hard for any writer or any producer to be able to do that. And we can’t fund everything," he said.

A spokesman for BBC Films confirmed they had turned down a request for finance. "They can only invest in a certain number of projects every year," he said. "They’re not in a position to help everybody, even a great filmmaker liked Terence Davies."