The least-seen of Mackendrick’s Ealing pictures, The Maggie tells an unusual story of a culture clash between the Old and New Worlds. Its title is the name of a decrepit Scottish vessel whose wily captain blackmails an American tycoon into using his ramshackle boat to move valuable furniture to an island mansion. Mackendrick's precursor to Local Hero applies an almost anthropological interest in the vestiges of village culture in the postwar world to establish an irresolvable dichotomy between Yankee pragmatism and materialism and the penurious charm and superstitions of the islanders
