Cities on screen: choose Edinburgh

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 flees through Edinburgh after being arrested for 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 filmgoers would now smile fondly whenever they thought of Princes Street. The film also forever linked the city to unsavoury junkies and the darkest comedy.

Yet Edinburgh has always been both This And that: a place of grand Georgian crescents and tougher suburbs. Lately, the city has also led a cinematic double life. At the multiplex, it has served as the setting for Marvel movies and the Fast and Furious franchise. F9 wreaked havoc on the Royal Mile; Avengers: Infinity War He used locations such as a fictional fast food restaurant on Cockburn Street offering to “fry your kebab”.

But there have also been all sorts of memorable films in which the city was much more than a kebab shop or a high-speed set-up. These films, linked to the very essence of Edinburgh, are the ones I have collected here.

“Trainspotting” (Danny Boyle, 1996)

So yes, it’s hard to start talking about Edinburgh on film anywhere other than Danny Boyle’s adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s caustic cult novel. That chase from Princes Street to Calton Road Bridge was just the beginning of a story steeped in the city, from its rundown Leith district to its annual festival (which the characters weren’t fans of).

And yet, in movies, things are rarely what they seem. At the risk of shattering illusions, almost everything that happens in the film, beyond this opening sequence, was actually shot in Glasgow, Edinburgh’s eternal rival.

But we can also add a postscript. Two decades later, Boyle’s sequel T2 was released. This time, with the success of the first film having helped to replenish the budget coffers, the bulk of the film was shot in Edinburgh itself. A tour of locations duly included Arthur’s Seat, the picturesque cobblestones of the Old Town and even the Scottish Parliament. Oh, and also Calton Road Bridge – all parties having come a long way since the first film, before ending up back where they started.

Where to watch: Apple TV, BFI Player

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“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (Ronald Neame, 1969)

The great and singular Scottish novelist Muriel Spark was a product of Edinburgh. By the age of 18, she was working in the back room of a luxury department store on Princes Street. Before that, she had trained at what was then James Gillespie’s School for Girls, where the staff included the moody governess who would inspire her most famous novel: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’s Life.

In the 1969 film adaptation, Maggie Smith had to adopt an accent, despite her mother being Scottish. But the city around her was very real. Grassmarket and Greyfriars Kirkyard played notable roles, with the fictional character of Brodie living on Admiral Terrace in Spark’s former stomping grounds in Bruntsfield. (In the only adjustment to urban reality, to properly capture the 1930s setting, all the television aerials in sight had to be manually removed.)

Where to watch: DVD

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“The Illusionist” (Sylvain Chomet, 2010)

Love at first sight exists: The Illusionist is proof of this. In 2003, French animator Sylvain Comet arrived at the Edinburgh Film Festival to promote his cult film See you in BellevilleThe director was immediately taken with the film, and he left Paris to live and work there. He also brought with him a draft, an unrealized screenplay by French comic master Jacques Tati.

Chomet reimagined the story of a down-on-his-luck magician and a young woman who believes in her gifts. He first made it into an animated film, then changed the setting from Prague to Edinburgh in the 1950s. The city is immediately familiar to me, even half a century later, with its department stores and dusty theaters overlooked by Edinburgh Castle, where the elegant and the elemental rub shoulders.

As is often the case, Chomet and Edinburgh would eventually part ways. A few years later, he would settle in Provence. But the film remains an ardent love letter.

Where to watch: Amazon Prime United States

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“Hallam Foe” (David Mackenzie, 2007)

Glasgow-based director David Mackenzie is a chameleon behind the camera. His 2016 neo-Western Against all oddsfor example, played to great effect in West Texas. But he made a splash early in his career with Hallam’s Enemya twisted tale of voyeurism starring Jamie Bell as the title teenager, newly arrived in Edinburgh to relentlessly observe the city around him.

These voyeuristic tendencies gave the film endless opportunities to participate, of course. Positioned on rooftops with binoculars, Hallam duly casts his eye over landmarks such as Waverley Station and Princes Street Garden, all wrapped up in this Edinburgh answer to Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rear window.

Where to watch: DVD

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“Sunshine on Leith” (Dexter Fletcher, 2013)

Queen and Elton John would both become the subjects of jukebox musicals directed by director Dexter Fletcher. The Rocket Man Or Bohemian RhapsodyHowever, there was Sunshine over Leith:Fletcher’s feel-good adventure based on the songs of The Proclaimers and set in the Edinburgh home of twin singer-songwriters Craig and Charlie Richards.

The story involves two young Scottish soldiers returning from Afghanistan, where one of them falls in love with an English woman. But of course, the plot was just a pretext to showcase the songs, including a climax involving 500 extras, choreographed to The Mound.

Where to watch: Apple TV, Amazon Prime

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The Bill Douglas Trilogy (Bill Douglas, 1972-1978)

The Edinburgh you see in the first three of the four films directed 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 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 quite far from the singing sweetness of a Sun in Leith: a trilogy of raw, semi-autobiographical portraits of a young boy growing up in the destitution of the post-war mining village of Newcraighall, a few miles from the centre of Edinburgh. Even today, these films continue to influence leading British directors such as Andrea Arnold and Lynne Ramsay. Douglas and his Edinburgh are an integral part of the very fabric of British cinema.

Where to watch: Television on tanks, Blu-ray/DVD

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“Shallow Grave” (Danny Boyle, 1994)

Two years before Train watchingDanny Boyle made another film in the Scottish capital that some would say is an even better Edinburgh film, also starring Ewan McGregor (I’m one of them). Shallow grave It was a dark tale of a trio of young professional flatmates who descend into crime in a well-appointed flat around the corner from Royal Circus. And the opening sequence was just as attention-grabbing.

As McGregor later walked along Princes Street, here the great crescents of the New Town flashed past in a hyper-accelerated car ride. “It could have been any city,” his voiceover said, but that wasn’t quite true. Socially as well as geographically, the whole film was a quintessentially Edinburgh affair. And yet there was an additional connection with Train watching We should probably admit it for the sake of the record. Whisper it, but then again, this most Edinburgh of films was mostly shot in Glasgow…

Where to watch: Apple TV, Amazon Prime

Tell us about your favourite films set in Edinburgh in the comments below. And follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter