Understanding Narratives of Nationhood: Film-makers and Culloden

Film audiences have long been invited to view Scotland and Scottish life through a historic lens. Influenced by the pre-existing literary traditions of tartanry and kailyard, film-makers have focused nostalgically on the myths and legends of the Highland and pre-industrial Scotland, with the implications that this approach has for representations of the country and its people. This paper describes a classroom exercise entitled “Tales of the Forty-Five” that explores expressions of this idea in cinematic representations of place. It does so by taking three films that depict the Battle of Culloden Moor—Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948), Culloden (1964) and Chasing the Deer (1994). We show how students are asked to compare the depictions of Culloden in these films and comment on their role in their respective narratives as, respectively, landscape of regret, killing field and site of internecine struggle. Questions are asked about the future of such representations of place given the new political realities of post-devolution Scotland and about further pedagogic uses of film.