I rushed to the mirror. At the sight that met my eyes, my blood was changed to something exquisitely thin and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde. How was this to be explained? I asked myself; and then, with another bound of terror – how was it to be remedied?

The Maggie [Alexander Mackendrick, 1954] represents Scotland at its most selflacerative. Precisely at the moment, the early fifties, when the massive penetration of American capital into Scotland was gathering pace, The Maggie actually sets the two halves of the contradiction – American entrepreneur and Scottish workers – in opposition to each other, but with almost wilful perversity the film has the Scots win hands down. In true Kailyard style, what is not achievable at the level of political struggle is attainable in the delirious Scots imagination.

The Maggie is a comedy from Ealing about a dilapidated, flat-bottomed steamboat, one of the ‘puffers’ trading in Scottish waters, which by a combination of accident and cunning has been entrusted with a valuable cargo. The owner of the cargo, an American businessman, discovering that his goods are in a ship condemned as unseaworthy, supposes that it is a simple matter to have them transferred. The rest of the film is about his battle against the stratagems of a crew determined to finish the job.