I Know Where I'm Going! (1947)

Legendary directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are best known for their glorious Technicolor achievements. Their impressive careers delivered the likes of The Thief of Bagdad, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman, all sumptuous and sweeping pictures that now feel way ahead of their time. Earlier in their careers, they were also responsible for 'smaller' films set in and around Powell's native Britain (Pressburger was born in Austria-Hungary but died in the country he spent most of his working life in). One such film, from 1945, is I Know Where I'm Going!, a charming little romantic drama set on the Scottish Hebrides.Ambitious and headstrong young Englishwoman Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) has known how her life will pan out ever since she was a little girl. Much to the concern of her father (George Carney), she is to marry wealthy, and much older, industrialist Sir Robert Bellinger, who owns a lavish home on the remote island of Kiloran. When she arrives by boat on a nearby island, the area is so thick with fog that to complete the last leg of her journey would be an impossible and life-threatening task. As a result, Joan is forced to wait for better weather on the Isle of Mull, where she meets handsome young naval officer Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey), who is on shore leave and also trying to make it to Kiloran. The weather doesn't improve, and the more time Joan spends with her new acquaintance, the more torn she becomes between ambition and love.Powell and Pressburger made films in colour prior to 1945, but I Know Where I'm Going! isn't any less visually inspiring due to being shot in black-and-white. Cinematographer Erwin Hillier (who had worked with the directors on A Canterbury Tale) captures the Hebrides as a cold, unforgiving part of the world, lashed by constant rain storms and its inhabitants threatened by a nearby whirlpool. Yet it's also serene, untouched by the modern world, albeit invaded by unwanted rich folk. Of course, it's all a metaphor for Joan's emotions, as she decides between the calmer, gentler lands on which she currently walks or braving the dark, dangerous unknown. She claims to know just where she's going, but does her heart tell her otherwise? Events won't surprise you, but you'll be swept up in the film's flow and sentiment nevertheless. Hiller and Livesey form an attractive couple with plenty of chemistry, and Hillier's camera will have you swooning over the locations.

The Archers' (Powell and Pressburger) Black-and-White romance, shot during wartime, just prior to their foray into Technicolor. In the center stage of it is a middle-class English woman Joan Webster (Hiller), accentuated by the titular motto, she is a headstrong city gal, endowed with a limpid mind, and always knows what she wants ever since she is a little girl (real silk stockings). After a succinct prologue traversing through her childhood to adulthood, now at the age of 25, Joan is going to marry a magnate of chemical business, and their wedding will be held in the (fictitious) Isle of Kiloran, but there is a catch, is this affluent but much older fiancé is the right man for her? That is the time-honored dilemma sets to disorient the self-willed soul of Joan, with a little help of a well-timed gale standing between her and the island, ever so close, but cannot reach, nature has unleashed a warning sign of this matrimony. Thus, after traveling from Manchester through sundry methods of transports, Joan is stuck in the Isle of Mull, impatiently waits for the blustering gale to lull, and she meets the local denizens and a tinge of romance troublingly budding between her and Torquil MacNeil (Livesey), a navy officer who plans to spend his furlough on Kiloran as well, a subplot concerns an ancient curse subjected to the laird of Kiloran would serve as a sterling springboard for the pair to realize their true feelings for each other. But, their chemistry, the magic that leaves one's heart palpitating with hankering doesn't make for a leavening feeling of entrancement, albeit Hiller's emotive rendition is pitch- perfect and bursting with niceties. So Joan, portrayed as a self-seeking and reckless woman purported by the modern air of independence, falls for a nondescript character like Torquil (easy- going but blue-blooded) as a contingency when she has learned a lesson from her own mistake of preferring monetary security to a more organic life, the eloquence is rather deficient, conversely it also makes Torquil's choice of Joan, a city girl with glamour, over his long-time friend Catriona Potts (a shimmering Pamela Brown), an expansive huntress, sounds awkwardly hypocritical, the film's ethnographic message certainly hits the right mark, but its sex politics fails to launch in afterthought. Be that as it may, the film is an absolute gas to behold, not the least for its sterling cinematography, elemental and picturesque (makes one wonder what it would look like if it were shot in colors), particularly, the eye-opening, studio-bounded money shots of the monstrous Corryvreckan whirlpool, starkly conjures up its cinematic allure for progeny to ponder about The Archers' studious work ethic and their state-of-the-art craftsmanship.

Joan Webster is an ambitious and stubborn middle-class English woman determined to move forward since her childhood. She meets her father in a fancy restaurant to tell him that she will marry the wealthy middle-aged industrial Robert Bellinger in Kiloran island, in the Hebrides Islands, Scotland.Martin Scorsese has said, "I reached the point of thinking there were no more masterpieces to discover, until I saw I Know Where I'm Going!" Now, with all due respect to Scorsese, I would not call this a masterpiece. But it is definitely a solid entry in Michael Powell's filmography. The story is very moving.What was interesting is that I watched this as a double feature with "Edge of the World", completely by accident. But they go together perfectly, both focused on the seaside world of the Outer Hebrides. While the plots do not necessarily go together, the atmosphere does, and that makes it perfect.

Wendy Hiller plays a character who is swirling around in her own whirlpool, who, like Molly Brown, is determined not to let anybody pull her down. She's engaged to marry a Scottish nobleman, but when she shows up in the sea-side village to catch a boat to the island where this unseen character lives, she must face some facts about herself when blowing gales (gusty sea winds) prevent her from getting to that island which spookily looms way out in the middle of the sea. She falls in love with Roger Livesey, a resident of the village she is stuck in, but his brooding nature (like the Moorish Heathcliff of "Wuthering Heights") haunts both of them. Determined not to betray her promise, she makes an attempt to get to the island but a force of nature greater than themselves threatens to take them both down when he tries to take her to the island himself.This moody darkly filmed atmospheric drama with slight comic overtones is a testament to the creative visions of the production team who take a rather ordinary story and make it unique. Hiller is an interesting actress in the cannon of cinematic history in their fact that in America, her somewhat plain appearance could never have made her a star, but she was a favorite of British filmmakers. Her plucky heroine is possessed with inner beauty that makes her seem much more physically attractive than she actually is and as an actress, she is magic. Many stage performers of less than movie goddess like appearance became stars in the theater but character actresses on screen. Actresses like Hiller were appreciated by serious film viewers because they truly looked "real" and represented who the world really was dominated by.