The Wicker Man (1973) Wikia
Advertisement

Disclaimer: I know that the exterior and interior were two different locations. That said, it is a minor detail that the placement of architectural elements like doors and windows do not match up when you compare the exterior to the interior. I only go into all these details for fun.

I use the Director’s Cut to analyze things as it is the most complete.

!st pic - The difference between the exterior and the interior

Pub interior vs exterior

2nd picture: Details of the interior

Pub

1st appearance

Howie comes in the entrance, coming in through double-hinged doors as a man exits. We see Oak on a bench below some harvest festival photographs and locals at the bar. He walks towards the bar passing the space that is missing the harvest festival photograph. The harbor master is facing him, leaning against the bar. We also see the baker, the schoolmaster and Broome along the wall of the nook I have labelled B. The gravekeeper is sitting in it.

The camera reverses and we see Alder behind the bar. You can also see some people in a room behind the bar one of whom raises a ceramic mug to their mouth. That hallway is where Willow comes out of soon enough.

When Willow enters, she pushes back a sliding door to her right. Willow picks up the key from the rack and heads into the dining room. The camera cuts to a shot of the room facing nook A. Note the brown curtains drawn over the windows.

The camera cuts to a shot showing the harbor master’s back singing to the fishmonger, Howie, Willow and Michael Cole playing the concertina. You can see some passageways behind them. To the right of the bar is  one that has a brown curtain as a partition. You can see some moldings for the next passageway but can’t tell anything about it in this shot. That is nook C. You can see a picture on the wall of the dining room but can’t make out more about what it is of. (It has some pink in it…)

When Oak sings “She’s not the kind of girl to bring home to your mother”, you can see the crown molding, as it is today in David Sherlock‎’s pictures of 8/20/15 on the Facebook Wicker Man (1973) group.

After he is dragged down by the woman in a yellow dress you can see the side of the room opposite the entrance fairly well. Of particular interest is the passageway next to nook A. It’s just an indent in the wall and we don’t get to see a better view of it. No one uses it in the movie.

Immediately after that shot, the fiddler (Ian Cutler) gets into the scene. He and two other members of the band (Andy Tomkins on guitar, Gary Carpenter on recorder) and Broome’s smirking girl friend are in nook B. There are harvest festival photos along the two opposite walls and the window has a curtain drawn in front of it. That window should be facing the front of the pub that we see exterior shots of. (Notice how that is the only window we see on that side of the bar yet the exterior shots of the pub show two windows and they are BOTH brightly lit though we cannot see into them. Given that the entrance to the pub is through double-hinged doors and the exterior door we see is a normal single-hinged door, there must be a hallway and some rooms inbetween the exterior door and the interior door. David Sherlock‎ says there used to be bathrooms beyond that interior door. This presents us with our first problem.

Problem #1: The windows seen of the exterior do no match where there should be windows in the interior.

Broome has lept down from his perch with his girlfriend so that he is able to start the next verse in the next shot where we see the whole room facing nook A. There’s a close-up of the baker as he sings his line, the spot with the missing harvest festival picture behind him.

As the next chorus begins, we see Willow and the fiddler. Behind them is a room, probably the dining room. We see a picture on the wall but it is dark.

In the third verse, which is only available on the Director’s Cut, we see a tight shot of the musicians in nook B.

Good shot of tile floor as they sing about her left tow and her right toe.

A nice shot FROM nook B shows the tamborine in the foreground with the harbor master, Howie and Willow and the back of the bar behind them. Tankards on a shelf, a model ship to the left of the clock, pewter plates on the shelf on the wall to the right. (This shot gets repeated after Howie pulls Rowan’s pic out of his pocket.)

After Howie says No, thanks, not just now, refusing Alder’s offer to have a wee drink, we see the door ajar to the dining room behind him.

The next shot shows the schoolmaster twirling with a man in a white shirt guiding him as the camera faces nook A from the far end of the room. I have always wondered about this dance and would love to find out more about it if anyone can find out more about it.

You might also note that a man in dark blue sweater and the woman later seen in Gently Johnny who is wearing a light blue dress with white cuffs and collar are dancing on the bench behind him, back and forth waltz-like. That might be Peter Brewis playing the recorder or penny-whistle second to the end of those seated at the bar.

The camera fades from the close-up of Rowan’s pic to a festival photograph. We don’t see the year for this one. It has a girl with bangs. The camera pans up to the 1970 picture. This picture has broken glass in the lower left-hand edge. It then pans left to the 1971 pic. This May Queen has braids. The camera pans down to where the missing photograph is.

So, since they went in order, we can assume that the first picture we saw was for the 1969 festival.

The shot we see that shows Alder and Howie by the wall of photos shows 7 harvest pictures. We could assume then that they go as far back as 1965 on that wall. Who knows about the other pics we see elsewhere in the pub.

Why Alder is leaning against that wall when he was behind the bar when the picture was starting to be passed around is a mystery. The film needed him there to make a point so he was there is the explanation.

After Howie leaves for the dining room we see a shot of Alder, the spot where the missing photo should be and the musicians in nook B and one more harvest festival pic on the wall.

After the close-up of Howie’s dinner, we see Willow come in with a pint. Notice the open door behind the door to the dining room. The door directly behind the cash register is where Willow comes and goes. Notice also the door to the dining room. That would be to the left of the cash register. You can also see the door frame of the passageway to the main room of the pub to the left of Howie from our view. That door is closed now.

The background to Willow’s reaction shots show a dark painting and a plant. Also a column or edge.

The exterior shot of the Green Man ends that scene. You can see a little into the second window to our right of the front door, the same as before the interior scene started.

***

Next appearance, after Howie has seen the orgy.

It starts with a close-up of Oak twirling a man above his shoulders, Broome cheering him on and Andy Tomkins (guitarist) to his left.

The next shot is from further back. We see Peter Brewis and Gary Carpenter standing on the bench of nook A. Not the fish behind curved glass above the entrance door. There is another one opposite it that you can see in other shots. Also note the little fan high on the wall.

As Alder grins at Howie’s approach, we can clearly see into the dining room. It looks like there is a bench on the right, a round table in the middle(?, Howie was seated against the wall when he eat…) and a brown curtain covering a window. Howie circles around through the dining room and picks up the key from Alder behind the bar. Notice that Alder says “You’ll find it at the top of the stair, on your right.” in answering Howie’s question as to where his room was.

Problem #2: Howie’s room is not on the RIGHT at the top of the stairs. It is on the LEFT.

Here it gets tricky. Advancing forward to the scene with the Hand of Glory, we see Willow and Alder outside Howie’s door. There are steps up to his room from a landing. We can only assume since we never see around that corner that Willow’s room is reached by turning to the RIGHT at that point since we see her shadow pass under Howie’s door and then the light come on in her room (which has other logistical problems I’ll wait til later to get into).

So, you can look at what I have written about Howie and WIllow’s (and Alder’s room) now to see how this all relates… Back to the pub…

Howie passes Alder, turns right into that passageway that Willow had come out of and walks into it. We can see that to his right are more bar fixtures/bottles. Straight ahead is an open window which allows us to see another room with a small picture on its wall. Looks like a table to his left which would have been where the people we saw earlier were sitting.

We then cut to the exterior.

Right after that we’re back inside and looking at Andy Tomkins playing guitar as Gently Johnny starts. The musicians, Paul Giovanni and other pub-goers are in nook C.

it cuts to a wider shot where we can see all in that room/nook. The girl with the blue dress and white cuffs and collar is on far left, then Ian Cutler, his girl friend, Michael Cole the concertina player, Gary Carpenter bother with their elbows on the table, their arms propping their heads up, Paul Giovani and Andy Tomkins. There is a picture on the wall, perhaps a poster but it is dark we can’t make out what it is of. It looks a little modern in the glimpses we do get to see of it. The curtains by the window in back are not drawn but it is black beyond that window.

After the scenes with Willow, Howie and Ash of the upstairs, we return downstairs, now behind the bar looking towards nook C. Note the dining room door behind the cash register. It’s hard to see but it is open.  We also see two more harvest festival pics and a reasonably good view of the poster in nook C and one in the dining room! (Use the Final Cut to see the details even better. The poster in the dining room appears to be of a stylized character raising it’s hand with a red glow around it in an amphitheater, a poster for a play of movie perhaps. It’s hard to tell what the poster is in nook C. It might be a seated cat figure in front of a patterned background with a crescent moon white shape at its feet.)

It then cuts to inside the nook, panning up from a close-up of a round table (one of the two in there) to Andy Tomkins. We see Gary ready to play his recorder, Michael playing the harmonica, Ian, Peter Brewis playing another harmonica and the others. The window behind them is black.

When we return back to the singers in the nook, we see an additional couple to the right of the guitar player showing the enclosing wall that would be the other side of the pub main room. They are sitting in a space barely big enough for two. The entrance to the nook would be on our right. There is also enough room on top of the backboard for people to rest their beer glasses and cigarette packs. (The hand we see tapping the rhythm at the beginning from inside the nook is either one of these two.)

When the camera pans up to the ceiling to see Diane Cilento’s tarot card painting, we see that at least one of the back windows is opened out. (Which brings up another kettle of fish: Since they are all looking up at the ceiling, one assumes that Willow and Ash are above them in Willow's room. If that is the case, where would Howie's room be? Nook B? There's no way we can tell. And another thing to ponder: is there some symbolism in the choice of tarot card for this scene? It appears to be the figure The Sun. So perhaps not specifically to this scene but to Summerisle in general...)

As Ash and Willow come, we return back to the Green Man. The POV is from behind the bar and you can clearly see the doors to both the dining room and nook C. The dining room door opens to the right and the door to the nook opens to the left, both from that center column. For some reason the door to the nook is partially closed so we can’t see into it very well. We don’t see anyone in it whereas before they were all packed quite tightly. Oops.

***

Willow’s dance

The first we see of the pub during this is a non-descript shot of the exterior, possibly the same shot used in other nighttime exterior views.

Then we get a close-up of the guitarist and fiddler playing. Then the tamborine being played.

***

The morning after Willow’s dance

(only in the Final Cut and theatrical versions), Willow is out front, washing the tables. (Not sure why they need washing….)

We see tables. Howie enters the scene as if he is coming out of the front door but we don’t see or hear anything to indicate a door closing. We see the house across the street and people walking and bicycling by in the background.

The next shot shows the front of the Green Man. We see the front windows and several other tables and chairs as well as a flowering vine against the wall.

***

The next time we see the Green Man is when Howie returns from searching the houses.

Willow is behind the bar, Howie is reflected in the mirror coming through one side of the double door. As the camera pans to the right you might be able to see a little bit of the room beyond the other dining area behind the bar. There appears to be a large mirror above a radiator with a small picture to the right of it. Above that might be a window with shades drawn. Playing it at slow-mo it looks like the mirror/radiator/picture are beyond the window… I don’t get the architecture here…

As Howie approaches the bar we see the door that Willow made her entrance from is closed and the door to the dining room from behind the bar is open into the dining area (hinge on the left.)

As Howie goes into the passageway behind the bar you can see a little more of what that bar area looks like. A few things on the wall. Brown diamond-shaped wallpaper… A milkshake (or cocktail mixing) machine…

Advertisement