Barrel Strength

“Tunes of Glory” (1960) is one of the greatest films ever made, and I was glad to learn that its author, Ronald Neame, director, writer and cinematographer, thought it his best work. he was also responsible for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and many other significant films. Happily for him, he made a fortune on “The Poseidon Adventure”, of which he took a 5% cut for rescuing it from a failing producer.

I shall not ruin the plot of Tunes of Glory for you; just make every effort to watch it. I place up there with Blade Runner as among the greatest films ever made. The performances of Alec Guinness and John Mills are outstanding. The plot concerns the reaction of the regiment to the new colonel, who has been sent up from London to take over what had been his father’s regiment at some previous time, and the profound rejection the new graft endures when he cannot accommodate to the actual working style and values of the organization.

Tunes of Glory is an accurate depiction of a Scottish Highland regiment, but it is more: it is the exact expression of Jane Jacobs’ ideas about guardian institutions. The guardian institutions are those non-market institutions: the courts, the regiments, the churches, the professional associations, the schools and universities, that form the cultural, legal and military backbone in which the market society works. Corruption, said Jacobs, occurs when the morality appropriate to the market invades a guardian institution (bribing the cops or the judge) as well as when guardian values infect market institutions, such as when values such as resort to force, obedience, violence, hierarchy, secrecy, closedness and prodigious display pervade a market institution.

You do not need to read Jane Jacobs to understand what Ronald Neame was depicting in Tunes of Glory: so great an artist needs no further explanation. But if you will look at the list of contrasting values that Jacobs developed, comparing “guardian” to “market” values, you will obtain a deeper insight into this great movie.

A link to Daimnation goes into the Jane Jacobs’ thinking on this more deeply.