So far, so good for Hudson

Is Hugh Hudson on the comeback trail? He has two movies opening this month, one in America called I Dreamed of Africa, and one over here, which may as well be called I Dreamed of Scotland. In fact it's trading as My Life So Far, and is based on Son of Adam, Denis Forman's memoir of a Scottish childhood before the First World War.

Like all Hudson's best films, it has tartan blood coursing through its veins. Remember those young chaps in their singlets in Chariots of Fire, jogging slow-mo through the surf to the synth of Vangelis? That was shot on the sands of St Andrews, although it was meant to be Broadstairs. And how about Greystoke? The bit with the female acrobats and dancers in monkey suits was filmed in Africa, but the bit with Ralph Richardson and Elgar at their hammiest was shot in Floors Castle in the Borders, near where, as a child, Hudson summered with an aunt.

My Life So Far, a gentle child's eye view comedy, is set in a rambling house large enough for Colin Firth, as batty inventor Fraser Pettigrew, to shelter his innumerable brood of ginger kiddies. "There's something about Scotland which is very very calming," Hudson states. "Each film I've made there has worked. This film works, I think. I don't know if it will work in a financial sense. It's not the greatest measure of longevity. Chariots is a film which has lasted. Greystoke seems to have lasted. And I think this will. It's got a lot of joy in it." Which may be more than can be said for Hudson, whose two new films are a reminder that his career has not turned out quite as it might have done.

They found the house at the top end of Loch Fyne, near the famous oyster emporium, where cast and crew ate often. "It was too far away for everybody to come and annoy us," says Hudson. "Money people. Obviously David came." David is Lord Puttnam, who got Hudson his first gig as a film director, after a long apprenticeship in documentaries, with Chariots of Fire. Somehow they never worked together again. Hudson went on to make Greystoke, where he discovered Christopher Lambert ("God knows what's happened to him. Threw it away. It's easy to do that") and famously used Glenn Close to mask Andie Macdowell's Southern drawl ("it jolted her into doing something about her acting. She's not bad now. She's no longer, I think, a movie star but she did quite well.") Puttnam, meanwhile, stayed in Scotland to make Local Hero with Bill Forsyth.

I wonder whether there's a touch of the spurned wife in Hudson's little tirade against Forsyth, who he says tried to thwart My Life So Far's bid for Scottish funding. "This film was up for Lottery money and Bill Forsyth was on the board and he tried to divert money away from it. He's a mean-spirited man, I discovered on this film. He hangs himself by his own rope, Mr Forsyth, saying stupid things, like he has a monopoly on the Scottish film industry. Scotland is a free country. Anyone can go and film there."

On Chariots' wings, producer and director both went to America and came unstuck: Puttnam as studio head of Columbia, Hudson with the epic catastrophe Revolution. He didn't make another movie for eight years, although he still thinks Revolution was unjustly treated.

"I think it's my most daring film, I have to say. I think it's got a real quality about it. It's a very imperfect film. The script wasn't good enough, and I should have had longer to finish the film off. It could have been better structured. But it's a really unusual film. I was made a scapegoat. Unfairly, I would say. We begged Goldcrest to give us more time to make it more cohesive. We weren't allowed to."

He'd love a shot at a director's cut. "Not going to, though. If I make an enormous blockbuster film then I could." A propos, he lives in hope that one day someone will finance Nostromo, the adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novel that he wanted to direct after David Lean's death. (He thought the BBC version awful - even the BBC directors branded it an expensive flop).

After Revolution, he threw himself into ads and party political broadcasts. The commercial he shot for BA, at the time the most expensive ever made, is his most bombastic work, with the Hudson signature of a brilliant musical soundtrack. Then there was "Kinnock: The Movie", plus its several sequels, which were derided by the Right-wing Press. "Of course they would. Why wouldn't they? They were jealous. Thatcher was jealous. She wanted one of those films. They made a difference. They were attacked as meretricious and manipulative, but what is film-making anyway but that?"

Despite the thin white beard and Trotskyite specs, Hudson bears a passing resemblance to Denis Law. You'd never guess that he was born four years before the war. Realistically, though, at his age opportunities to make blockbusters are few and far between. My Life So Far has been and gone without setting America on fire. I Dreamed of Africa, otherwise known as Into Africa, is about a woman overcoming troubles in Kenya starring Kim Basinger in a nonfemme fatale role. "It's a women's movie," he says.