Tunes of Glory

Plot

The film opens in a Battalion officers' mess of an unnamed Highland Regiment in the early post-war era. Major Jock Sinclair (Alec Guinness) announces that this will be his last day as Commanding Officer. Sinclair, who had been in command since the battalion's colonel was killed in action during the North African campaign during the Second World War, is to be replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Basil Barrow (John Mills). Although Major Sinclair led the battalion throughout the remainder of the war, Brigade HQ considered Barrow to be a more appropriate peacetime commanding officer.

Barrow arrives early and observes the battalion's officers (including Sinclair) dancing rowdily. Barrow and Sinclair briefly swap their respective military backgrounds. Sinclair joined the regiment as an enlisted bandsman and rose through the ranks, winning the Military Medal and Distinguished Service Order during the war. Barrow by contrast came to the regiment directly from Oxford University, his ancestors having been colonels of the regiment before him – although he served only for a year with the regiment back in 1933 before being posted to "special duties". When Sinclair humorously tells of the time he was briefly thrown in Barlinnie Prison for being drunk and disorderly (also in 1933), Barrow rather reticently mentions his experience as a prisoner in a Japanese POW camp. Sinclair dismissively assumes Barrow received preferential treatment being an officer ("officer's privileges and amateur theatricals") and sat out the war, but in fact Barrow is deeply psychologically scarred after being tortured by the Japanese but does not tell Sinclair who privately resents the fact that he is being replaced by a "stupid wee man".

Meanwhile Morag (Susannah York), Sinclair's daughter, is observed illicitly meeting an enlisted piper (John Fraser).

Barrow immediately passes several orders designed to instil discipline in the battalion that Sinclair had allowed to slip. Particularly controversial is an order that all officers take lessons in Highland dancing in an effort to make their customary rowdy style more formal and suitable for mixed company. However the unchanged energetic dancing of the officers, led by a drunken Sinclair at Barrow's first cocktail party with the townspeople, incites his anger. An outburst by Barrow only further damages his own authority.

Tensions come to a head when Major Sinclair publicly assaults the uniformed piper he discovers with his daughter – "bashing a corporal" as he put it. Barrow decides an official report must be made, meaning an imminent court-martial, even though he is aware the action will further erode his popularity and authority within the battalion. Barrow is eventually persuaded to back down by Sinclair, who promises Barrow that Sinclair will support him in the future ("We'd make a good team."). The decision further undermines his authority, as Sinclair's promised support never materializes, and the other officers, notably Captain Alec Rattray (Richard Leech), treat him with a renewed lack of respect. The second in command, Major Charlie Scott, with glacial cruelty, implies that it is Sinclair who is really running the battalion, because he forced Barrow to dismiss the charges against him. Alienated now from both Sinclair's clique and the officers who formerly supported him, Barrow commits suicide.

With the colonel's death, Sinclair realises he is to blame. He calls the officers to a meeting and announces plans for a grandiose funeral fit for a field marshal, complete with a march through the town in which all the "tunes of glory" will be played by the pipers. When it is pointed out how out disproportionate the plans are to the circumstances, especially given the manner of the colonel's death, Sinclair insists that it was not suicide but murder. He tells everyone he himself was the murderer and the other senior officers were his accomplices with the exception of the colonel's adjutant.

Sinclair suffers a nervous breakdown and is escorted from the barracks while the officers and men salute as he passes during the closing scene.