The Brothers

A fantastically weird and brutal drama set amidst the bleak shadows and ancient superstitions of Scottish clans on the Isle of Skye, David MacDonald’s The Brothers features what may be the most perverse murder in all of film: a traitorous informer is executed by being tied up and placed in the sea with a dead fish on his head where he bobs along in total silence until a giant seabird swoops down and gobbles up part of his face along with the fish. This scene (in the first act) establishes the tone of doom that will swallow up the rest of the film, but the ensuing drama will cycle through a full array of (mostly negative) human emotions: love, lust, fear, revenge, guilt, and shame. Having been orphaned and raised in a convent, beautiful Mary Lawson (Patricia Roc) is brought to Scotland to serve as housekeeper for a recently widowed man, Henry Macrae (Finlay Currie), and his sons Fergus (Maxwell Reed) and John (Duncan Macrae, who ironically shares a surname with his character). Mary is warned never to fraternize with the nearby McFarish’s, a rival clan that’s been feuding with the Macrae’s for countless generations, but with a pretty young girl new in town, sexual rivalries of all kinds are sparked (even though it omits the most risqué themes of the novel, the film’s use of nudity, sexual assault, and masochistic lust caused major problems with censors). After a while, of course, the Macrae brothers become convinced that Mary is evil incarnate. Filmed on location on the Isle of Skye, The Brothers is a visual tour-de-force, night fog mixing with tumbling cascades, the seemingly omnipresent low-key lighting making every interior feel like a candlelit cave. Astute noir fans may note a few scenes that presage later films in the cycle: a man trapped before a rising tide (1953’s Jeopardy), a rowboat murder at night (1951’s A Place in the Sun), etc.