This article is part of the FT Globetrotter’s guide to Edinburgh
Choose life. Choose to start this piece with a quote from the famous opening scene of Train watchingin which Ewan McGregor was on the run through Edinburgh after being caught shoplifting. The sequence became an instant classic. Some traditional corners of the Scottish capital might also have considered it a mixed blessing. A generation of film lovers would now smile fondly whenever they thought of Princes Street. The film also forever linked the city with disreputable drug addicts and the blackest of comedy.
Yet Edinburgh has always been both this and that: a place of great Georgian crescents and tougher suburbs. Lately, the city has also led a double cinematic life. At multiplexes, it has been a backdrop for Marvel movies and the Fast and Furious franchise. F9 brought chaos to the Royal Mile; Avengers: Infinity War Locations used included a fictional fast food outlet on Cockburn Street offering to “fry your kebab”.
But there have also been all kinds of memorable films in which the city has been more than just a kebab shop or a fast-paced set. These films, tied to the essence of Edinburgh, are the ones I have gathered here.
‘Trainspotting’ (Danny Boyle, 1996)
So, yes, it’s hard to begin to approach Edinburgh in a film other than Danny Boyle’s adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s caustic cult novel. That foot chase Princes Street Bridge to Calton Road It was just the beginning of a story steeped in the city, from decaying Leith to the annual festival (which the characters were not fans of).
And yet, in the movies, things are rarely what they seem. At the risk of shattering illusions, almost everything in the film, beyond the opening sequence, was actually filmed in Edinburgh’s eternal rival, Glasgow.
But we can also add a postscript. Two decades later, Boyle’s next work T2 This time, with the success of the first film fattening the budget, most of the film was shot in Edinburgh. A tour of the locations included Arthur’s Seat, the picturesque cobblestones of the Old Town and even the Scottish Parliament. Oh, and Calton Road Bridge too. All parts had come a long way since the first film, before returning to square one.
Where to see: Apple TV, BFI player
‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ (Ronald Neame, 1969)
The great and singular Scottish novelist Muriel Spark was, unsurprisingly, a product of Edinburgh. At 18 she was working in the backroom of a luxury department store on Princes Street. Before that, she had been educated at what was then James Gillespie’s School for Girls, where among the staff was the mercurial schoolmistress who would inspire her best-known novel: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’s Life.
In the 1969 film adaptation, Maggie Smith had to adopt an accent, even though her mother was Scottish. But the town around her was the real one. Grassmarket and Greyfriars Kirkyard played important roles, and the fictional Brodie lived in Admiral Terrace, on Spark’s old stomping grounds in Bruntsfield. (In the only adjustment made to urban reality, to properly capture the 1930s setting, all visible television aerials had to be manually removed.)
Where to see: DVD
‘The Illusionist’ (Sylvain Chomet, 2010)
Love at first sight does happen: The ilusionist This is proof. In 2003, French animator Sylvain Comet came to the Edinburgh Film Festival to promote his cult film. Meeting in BellevilleThe director was so enamored with the film that he moved from Paris to live and work in the city. He also brought with him a project: an unpublished script by French comics master Jacques Tati.
Chomet reimagined the story of a hapless magician and a young girl who believes in his gifts in two ways. First, he turned it into an animation; then he changed the setting from Prague to Edinburgh in the 1950s. The city was instantly familiar to me, even from a half-century away: department stores and dusty theatres dominated by Edinburgh Castle, the elegant and the elemental side by side.
As with so many great adventures, Chomet and Edinburgh would eventually part ways. A few years later, Chomet moved to Provence. But the film remains a scorching sweet song.
Where to see: Amazon Prime US
‘Hallam’s Enemy’ (David Mackenzie, 2007)
Glasgow-based director David Mackenzie is a chameleon behind the camera. His 2016 neo-western film Against all oddsFor example, he had a big impact in West Texas. But he made a splash early in his career with Hallam’s Enemya distorted voyeuristic tale starring Jamie Bell as the titular teenager, newly arrived in Edinburgh to relentlessly observe the city around him.
Those voyeuristic tendencies gave the film endless opportunities to engage, of course. Perched on rooftops with binoculars, Hallam scans landmarks such as Waverley Station and Princes Street Garden, all wrapped up in this Edinburgh version of Alfred Hitchcock’s film. The rear window.
Where to see: DVD
‘A bright sun in Leith’ (Dexter Fletcher, 2013)
Queen and Elton John would become the subject of jukebox musicals made by director Dexter Fletcher. Before Rocket Man either Bohemian RhapsodyHowever, there was Sun in LeithFletcher’s joyous, feel-good film based on the songs of The Proclaimers and set in the Edinburgh home of twin singer-songwriters Craig and Charlie Richards.
The story is about a pair of young Scottish soldiers returning from military service in Afghanistan, where one of them falls in love with an Englishwoman, of all people. But of course, the plot was just a pretext to showcase the songs, and no less importantly, a climax involving 500 extras, choreographed at The Mound.
Where to see: Apple TV, Amazon Prime
The Bill Douglas Trilogy (Bill Douglas, 1972-1978)
The Edinburgh seen in the first three of the four films made by Bill Douglas (My childhood, My people Ain and My way home) is physically the same city as any other in this selection. Arthur’s Seat It may appear in the background of a shot; a car will slowly drive up Mound Place near Princes Street Gardens.
But in spirit, they are some distance from the sweetness of collective singing of a Sun in Leith: a trilogy of raw, semi-autobiographical portraits of a boy growing up in the squalor of the post-war mining town of Newcraighall, just a few miles from the centre of Edinburgh. Even now, the films continue to influence key British directors such as Andrea Arnold and Lynne Ramsay. Douglas and his Edinburgh are part of the very fabric of British cinema.
Where to see: TV tank, Blu-ray/DVD
‘Shallow Grave’ (Danny Boyle, 1994)
Two years before Train watchingDanny Boyle made another film in the Scottish capital that some would say is actually an even better Edinburgh film, also starring Ewan McGregor (I’m one of them). Shallow grave It was the dark story of a trio of young professional flatmates who turned to crime in a well-appointed flat on the corner of Royal Circus. And the opening sequence was just as attention-grabbing.
Whereas McGregor toured Princes Street on foot, here the great crescents of the New Town flashed by on a hyper-accelerated car ride. “This could have been any city,” his voiceover said, but that wasn’t strictly true. Socially, as much as geographically, the whole film was a very Edinburgh affair. And yet there was one more link to Train watching We should probably admit it for the record. Whisper it, but I repeat, this film, the most Edinburgh of all, was filmed mainly in Glasgow…
Where to see: Apple TV, Amazon Prime
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