The first part of Bill Douglas' influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-'40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape - he paid for it with the money he made from returning empty jam jars - and this escape is reflected most closely at this time of his life as an eight-year-old living on the breadline with his half-brother and sick grandmother in a poor mining village.
Stephen Archibald
as Jamie
Hughie Restorick
as Tommy
Jean Taylor Smith
as Grandmother
Karl Fieseler
as Helmuth
Bernard McKenna
as Tommy's father
Paul Kermack
as Jamie's father
Helena Gloag
as Father's mother
Ann Smith
as Jamie's mother
Eileen McCallum
as Nurse
Helen Rae
as Bus conductress
James Eccles
as Man singing
