This film is part of Free
Guinness - Ploughman
A Guinness advert emphasising its virtues as an accompaniment to a traditional ploughman’s lunch.
Overview
Directed by Ridley Scott the year his feature debut The Duellists was released, the beautifully burnished cinematography of this commercial recalls his classic Dvo?ák-scored Hovis ad a few years earlier. The emphasis here is similarly on timeless tradition, inventively cross-cutting between pieces of equally essential machinery: the plough that tills the field, the knife that cuts the bread and cheese, the gadget that opens the bottle prior to pouring the pint - slowly, of course.
The vast majority of Ridley Scott’s 1970s moving-image output consisted of commercials produced through his company Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), which he founded in 1968 with his younger brother Tony. The best of them displayed a visual ambition and attention to detail, particularly the vivid evocation of atmosphere, that went some distance beyond the advertising norm. The ploughman and his friend are played by actor turned presenter Gavin Campbell and actor Jim Norton, the latter best known as the fearsome Bishop Brennan in Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted twenty years later.
