The Ballad of Tam Lin

 

O I forbid you, maidens a'
That wear gowd on your hair
To come or gae by Carterheugh,
For you Tam Lin is there

     Gosh, it has been a long, long time since I posted a film review, and the meantime I've seen plenty of good films.  Perhaps I ought to do some catching up.

     Anyway on Sunday evening I sat down with the bf to watch the remarkable and decidedly odd film 'The Ballad of Tam Lin' aka 'Tam-Lin', 'The Devil's Widow, 'The Devil's Woman' - the only film to be directed by the Anglo-American actor Roddy McDowal. A rare thing then, and perhaps the only movie to be based upon a British folk ballad, the eponymous 'Tam Lin'. The ballad is native to the eastern marches of Scotland, but its origin lies in the Scottish medieval Romance - a tale of abduction and rescue, the interplay of the Seen and Unseen, which in this case is the fairy realm. Thomas of Echeldoune, True Thomas, like Tam, had a run-in with the Queen of Elfland in the same sort of area. A coincidence?

     The film ingeniously follows the narrative structure of the ballad, moving in time but not space, placing the action in the contemporary Britain of the late 60s/early 70s. Visually, then, very stylish, as one might expect from a film of that period. It calls on a number of Late Sixties tropes such as the Occult Revival and pyschedics.  The action centres on the sybaritic 'household' - a motley collection of all sorts of beautiful, and not so beautiful, people - of the the mysterious Michaela Cazaret, 'Micky', played by Ava Gardner resplendent in Balmain. A subtle, charismatic performance. Look out for Jenny Handley, Peter Hinwood, Sinead Cusack, Madeline Smith and Bruce Robinson amongst the hangers-on.

     The film opens in Micky's London house - in Regent's Park, I think - where Tom Lynn is sharing Micky's bed. By the end of the day however Micky and her entourage of Lotus Eaters have arrived at her country house (the wonderfully romantic Traquair House) in the Scottish Borders.

     All, as you can imagine, is not as it seems (it seldom is), and as the film progresses the viewer is shown the murky depths beneath the glamorous but brittle surface. The catalyst for this process of revelation is the arrival of a stranger Janet, played by Stephanie Beacham in perhaps her first film role, though not an outsider as such for she is from the real world. Tellingly she is the daughter of the manse. Bored a little with rural life she is rather dazzled, and perhaps a little scared by what she sees on that first disconcerting encounter. One of the household she meets on that first visit is Tom. They meet subsequently by chance in the open countryside. Tom even then, one feels, is beginning to pull on his leash. There is a desire in him to explore the world. The two fall in love, Janet becomes pregnant and Micky jealous and vindictive. She wants her revenge and upon her orders Tom is pursued and abducted. There follows perhaps the most unsettling part of the film when the household (a new household, mind you, Micky having got bored of the old crowd) attempts to murder a drugged and hallucinating Tom. 

      A film then that is about the end of the Sixties, the collapse of that seductive dream, as Britain lurched into economic crisis and conflict. Watching 'Get Carter' a film of roughly the same vintage one feels the same thing, except in that film the victims are all really piling up for all to see.

     Both the film and ballad are a dramatization and indeed mythologizing - a mimetic representation - of a sort of passage rite from Tom in which he finally leaves (a prolonged) childhood, escaping from a dominant, monstrous mother figure (both ballad and film are rich with Jungian archetypes) and entering into the world of men. Earlier in the film Janet tells Tom to 'grow up'. In that final scene Tom undergoes a type of Baptism by fire and water emerging, just as in the ballad, that new man. 

     Both of us wished McDowall had made more films.

The Ballad of Tam Lin

1970

Producer:               Alan ladd Jr, Stanley Mann, Anthony B Unger, Henry T Weinstein

Director:                 Andy McDowall

Cinematographer: Billy Williams