Waverley Steps
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Film Description
John Eldridge's classic narration-free 1947 film about Edinburgh and a few of its inhabitants from one Sunday morning to Monday night. Also included are 'Edinburgh' (colour, 1966) about the history and life of the city and 'Northern Capital' (1937), a film made by local filmmaker Jean Gray showing the sights of the city.
Film Information
DVD Extras
Interactive Menus\Scene Access
Technical Details
| Certificate |
Ex |
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Length |
72 mins
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Label |
PANA |
| Cat No |
PDC2025 |
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Format |
DVD |
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Black & White |
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Aspect |
1.33:1 |
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Review by Graeme Hobbs
on 19th August 2005
Made by John Eldridge under the aegis of the COI for the inaugural Edinburgh Film Festival in 1948, Waverley Steps is a delightful and good-natured film about the city which gives ‘a glimpse into the lives of a few of its citizens between 5 o’clock one Sunday afternoon and late the following night’.
In its structure it’s an ingenious piece of work. With its beautifully rhythmical editing we are shown interlaced snapshots of a number of people’s lives which gradually build to a composite portrait of a city and its people, as known or unknown to the participants, their lives cross. None of this is overplayed though and scenes are lightly sketched but with an assurance that leaves no doubt about links between characters. A short example is enough to give a flavour of the crossed paths in the films:
A coalman gets his horse shod at the blacksmith’s then delivers coal to the neighbour of the prosecuting counsel in a bigamy case, who himself drives off in his car, nearly running over a Danish sailor on shore leave. After stabling his horse, the coalman then puts money on a dog race. Later that evening, we see the Dane entering a pub where he is greeted and bought a drink by a man at the bar. We can just see that it is the coalman who has won £5 on a winning dog – something he had learnt after leafing past the ‘Local Bigamy Case Shocking’ headline in the daily paper.
Designed without narration, the film comes across as a half-hour sound collage in which natural sounds are given precedence. Beginning with the banshee wail of an approaching train, we then pass through the streets and the station, the bar and the bedroom and from the ballet and ballroom to unexpected places such as the curling rink. Horses clop, wheeltappers tap, the blacksmith clangs his hammer, trains whistle and ships hoot. Snatches of conversation and street cries are also included: ‘Coal! Best Blackburn coal! Coal! Three shillin’s a bag. Coal!
There’s a vein of refreshingly sly wit in the film too as witnessed in the courtroom scene with the unlikely bigamist and also in an edit straight from a bank manager sipping coffee to a horse nose down in a food trough. We get the feeling too that no matter how lightly sketched these portraits are, the director cared about the people shown, something evident from the tenderly erotic scenes between the train driver and his lover. Overall, in terms of atmosphere Waverley Steps looks much like a precursor to Schlesinger’s Terminus, and should be as celebrated as that later film.
View more reviews by Graeme Hobbs
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