My Way Home ***** (1978, Stephen Archibald, Paul Kermack, Jessie Combe, Joseph Blatchley) – Classic Movie Review 8809

Writer-director Bill Douglas’s 1978 black and white British autobiographical drama My Way Home is the third and perhaps most impressive part of The Bill Douglas Trilogy begun with My Childhood (1972) and My Ain Folk (1973). It is the most satisfying, ambitious and positive, providing something like a happy ending, or at least an optimistic one, after all the earlier gloom.

After going to live with his paternal grandmother (Lennox Milne), working in a mine and in a tailor’s shop, the troubled young working class Scots autobiographical hero Jamie (Stephen Archibald) goes off to Egypt to do his National Service, on being conscripted into the RAF, and achieves personal emancipation.

Jamie makes his first friend, Robert (Joseph Blatchley), a kindhearted middle-class chap, who frees Jamie from his depression and self-pity. With this, the film awakens with wit and life, and it is a superb finish to a very fine trilogy.

With the trilogy begun in 1972-72, Bill Douglas had to delay making this final part till Stephen Archibald was old enough to play Jamie in the Egyptian National Service scenes.

The main cast are Stephen Archibald, Paul Kermack (Jamie’s father), Jessie Combe (father’s wife), William Carrol (their son Archie), Joseph Blatchley (Robert), Morag McNee (father’s girl friend), Lennox Milne (Grandmother), Gerald James (Mr Bridge), and Lita Roza.

The Bill Douglas Trilogy: My Way Home is directed by Bill Douglas, runs 71 minutes, is made by British Film Institute (BFI), is released by Connoisseur, is written by Bill Douglas, is shot in black and white by Ray Orton and is produced by Judy Cottam and Richard Craven.

It was released on DVD by BFI Video in 2008 in the UK.

It follows My Childhood (1972) and My Ain Folk (1973) and is the final film in The Bill Douglas Trilogy.

Bill Douglas, also known for Comrades (1986), died on 18 June 1991, aged 57. He also taught at Britain’s National Film and Television School.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8809

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