You know what I love?
I love classic Disney movies that are based on even-more-classic books.
I especially like it when their opening credits involve a copy of the book they're based on. There's something so homey about them. They give me such delicious anticipatory tingles.
I first watched Kidnapped (1959) in my tweens, and I became a firm fan of James MacArthur then and there. How could I resist his earnest portrayal of the sensible, kind, ever-helpful David Balfour?
I think I related to David a lot, too, as a tween. He's intelligent and level-headed, but he's plunged into a disorienting new world that has rules and expectations he's completely unfamiliar with, and it's hard for him to keep his balance there. He's constantly needing to pick up on new social cues, ask questions, and decide whether to try to understand the new people around him, and their foreign-seeming ways, or just go on his way and ignore them.
When I was 12, we moved from the Midwest to North Carolina. And I experienced much of the same cultural dislocation and confusion. I think I saw Kidnapped before we moved, maybe once, but it was after we moved that I rewatched it many times. I don't think I realized why it resonated with me so much, at the time, but I'm pretty sure now that my love for fish-out-of-water stories comes from having felt very much out of step and uncertain for the first two or three years after we moved.
Anyway, the movie opens on a sad circumstance: David Balfour's father has died, leaving the young man alone in the world, except for an uncle who lives far away, whom David has never met. After bidding his father's grave farewell, and asking the local minister for advice, David sets out to find this unknown uncle, Ebenezer Balfour.
David is a cheerful young man, but his first sight of his family's ancestral home is not very encouraging. Especially since a local woman tells him she curses that family every day because they're so horrible.
Ebenezer Balfour (John Laurie) is pretty scary too. He threatens to shoot David. Then he welcomes him into the crumbling hall, offers to share a fairly sinister bowl of gruel with him, then locks him in a spare room. Not exactly the welcome David was hoping for, considering that his uncle is the laird around there and reported to be quite wealthy.
One thing leads to another, and David winds up kidnapped (surprise!) by some unscrupulous sailors.
The ship runs down a small boat in the fog, then rescues the only survivor: Alan Breck Stuart (Peter Finch). And that's where the real fun begins. Because as much as I love David Balfour, I love Alan Breck Stuart even more. (I always hear him say his name that way, with the Stuart at the end even though he gets called simply Alan Breck most of the time.)
From here on out, what was simply a fairly interesting story about an unfortunate young man because a completely wonderful buddy movie. Like all the best buddy movies, it forces two very opposite people to rely on each other, with delightful results.
David Balfour is a lowland Scotsman, quiet and a little shy, good at keeping to himself and staying out of people's way. Alan Breck Stuart is a highland Scotsman, loud, stubborn, sly, and outgoing. They make unlikely allies, on the surface, but its their differences that make them such an effective team.
One seasoned, wily fighter and one brave-but-untested young man more than hold their own against a shipful of enemies, but they end up separated and cast ashore. David has no idea where he is, and so, being a fine and upstanding young citizen of the British Empire, he asks some passing redcoat soldiers for help.
Trouble is, those soldiers are hunting for Alan Breck Stuart and some of his friends. You see, Alan Breck Stuart and his friends are Jacobites, supporters of the fight to free Scotland from British rule. In fact, he's carrying a lot of money that's meant to support the Jacobite effort.
Due to David being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the redcoats assume he's aiding and abetting Alan Breck Stuart (which, let's be fair, he did while aboard the ship), and he winds up getting hunted himself.
Happily, the two friends are reunited while fleeing the authorities, and they set off across the Scottish Highlands to deliver the Jacobite funds and find David a way back home.
We shall now pause our narrative to admire the gorgeous Scottish scenery, because much of this was actually filmed in location in the Scottish Highlands!
Okay, that's enough scenery.
Along their way, David Balfour and Alan Breck Stuart encounter a series of interesting characters, including Robin MacGregor, played by Peter O'Toole making his big-screen debut and definitely making the most of his blue eyes and curly hair.
Alan Breck Stuart and Robin MacGregor are old rivals, almost enemies, prompting this sternly adorable glare.
Being both hot-blooded highland gentleman, they inevitably begin a swordfight inside the tiny croft where Alan and David have been staying while David recovers from a fever. Happily, the man who owns that croft is a wise and wily man himself. To save his house from being ruined and these two honorable-but-hasty gentlemen from depriving the Jacobites of some fierce fighters, he suggests an alternative way to duel.
Commence the bagpipe showdown!
Friends, if you've ever wanted to see Peter O'Toole wearing a kilt and playing a bagpipe while making snooty faces, you have come to the right movie.
Because David helped him so much with his quest to deliver the Jacobite funding, Alan Breck Stuart hatches a plan to help David get to the bottom of his kidnapping and maybe even acquire the estate that is rightfully his, not his uncle Ebenezer's. Which involves consulting a lawyer.
(Mild spoilers.) It also involves the lawyer and David hiding nearby while Alan tricks Ebenezer Balfour into admitting that he paid those sailors to kidnap his nephew so he wouldn't learn that HE is the rightful laird and not Ebenezer.
This is my favorite part of the movie, because Alan Breck Stuart is so darn cunning and clever and witty and... mmmmmmmmm, he's wonderful!
All's well that ends well, and David Balfour finally gains the inheritance and new home that he set out to find at the beginning of the movie. But he has to say goodbye to Alan Breck Stuart, who is off on another adventure, and that always makes me a bit sad. Still, you totally get the sense that the two of them will run into each other again one day, so I don't get too sad. After all, David has his own adventures ahead too.
Are the Scottish accents in this movie any good? I have no idea! And neither do I care. I love this movie, these characters, everything. It completely charms me.
This has been my contribution to the No True Scotsman Blogathon hosted this weekend by Real Weegie Midget Reviews :-)
