In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based on where my interests lead me and what’s available from my local public library.
I Know Where I’m Going! is another of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s wartime propaganda films, this time featuring the Hebrides as representatives of British traditional values which survive despite the commercial forces of the modern world. The Scots would like a word, but I’m going to Powell and Pressburger the benefit of the doubt and trust that, as with A Canterbury Tale, their interest was in portraying alternatives to materialism. I’ll even forgive them packaging it in a fairly conventional romcom plot and making the female lead almost villainous (had a key plot turn gone differently, you could remove the “almost”) because this is such an effective film.
The lead character, Joan Webster, is introduced in a comic montage illustrating that, from toddlerhood onwards she knew what she wanted and always made a beeline for it. Now 25, Joan (Wendy Hiller) is a smart, sophisticated young woman set to marry the wealthy industrialist Sir Robert Bellinger. But first she has to get to the wedding location, the island of Kiloran in the Hebrides (an archipelago off the northwest coast of Scotland), and the weather is not cooperating.
Joan gets as far as Mull, but rough weather requires that she stay over there, among people who are most definitely not English city folk of the kind she is used to. There’s the boatman Ruairidh Mhór (Finlay Currie), his young mate Kenny (Murdo Morrison), Kenny’s beloved Bridie (Margot Fitzsimmons), the eccentric falconer Colonel Barnstaplen (Captain C.W.R. Knight), homeowner Catriona Potts (Pamela Brown), and Royal Navy officer Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey), who is home on leave and is later revealed to be the laird (lord ) of Kiloran.
Joan and Torquil also find time to walk around the island and fall in love, which is not a good look for either of them since Joan’s marriage is imminent. The need to move forward with her previous plans (because she’s a woman that always achieves her goals) causes Joan to disregard the advice of the locals and nearly causes a tragedy, while casting her in the role of the rich Brit who thinks she knows better than anyone. In her own mind she’s trying to avoid a personal tragedy, but when it comes to endangering the lives of other people, there’s no question which side is the right one to be on.
Here’s a pro tip for anyone traveling in unfamiliar parts of the world: if the people who live there tell you the weather makes something too dangerous to be risked, trust their expertise over whatever your own desires may be. Your bank account may allow you to manipulate people, but all the money in the world can’t control the sea or the weather, and neither one has any particular interest in your survival.
The big star in I Know Where I’m Going! is the Hebridean landscape, which symbolizes the old values of Britain and a life far from the commercial buzz of mainland cities. Reportedly cinematographer Erwin Hillier shot the whole movie without a light meter, but you wouldn’t know it from the finished product. This film is also a masterpiece of editing, cut together so skillfully that you probably won’t notice that, for instance, every shot involving Roger Livesey was shot in at Denman Film Studios (he couldn’t travel to Scotland because he was appearing in a West End Play during shooting), while much of the rest of the film was shot on the Isle of Mull. So props to editor John Seabourne, Sr. for making it work so well, and that also explains the James Whale-style painted backdrops, although to be honest I didn’t even notice them on first viewing. | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 94
Technical details: 91 min.; B&W; screen ratio 1.33:1; English.
Edition reviewed: DVD
Extras: audio essay by film historian Ian Christie; behind-the-scenes stills narrated by (three-time Academy Award winner and longtime Martin Scorsese collaborator) Thelma Schoonmaker Power; Mark Cousins doc “I Know Where I’m Going! Revisited” (Petula Clark, who appears in the film, and Martin Scorsese are among the interviewees; excerpts from Michael Powell’s 1937 The Edge of the World with commentary; 1978 documentary “Return to the Edge of the World”; photo essay of the locations of the film by Nancy Franklin; home movies from one of Michael Powell’s Scottish expeditions, edited by Thelma Schoonmaker Powell.
Fun Fact: The Corryvreckan whirlpool scene is a combination of location and studio shooting and consumed most of the art department budget, which was almost equal to what was paid to the actors.
Parting Thought: The two lead characters in this film are both trying to get to Kiloran (apparently Colonsay, south of Mull, which has a Kiloran Bay) but neither ever gets there. Filmmaking convenience or something more profound?
