Suggested by
Nicky Smith
Extracted from
The Nation
(Issue Date: January 31, 2000)
The Nation
Stuart Klawans
Before today's great Iranian filmmakers went out to the streets, to shoot
with nonprofessional actors; before the Italian neorealists traveled to
Sicily to discover a raw, "primitive" condition within their own country,
the British director Michael Powell sailed to Scotland's outer islands and
made The Edge of the World. Shot in 1936 on Foula, using a dozen
actors and all the local residents, the film dramatized the end of a traditional
farming, fishing and herding community.
Like Robert Flaherty and F.W. Murnau's Tabu (which was released in
1931, providing Powell with one of his few possible models), The Edge
of the World is one part ethnography to two parts romance. A young man
(Niall MacGinnis) engages a friend in a reckless rock-climbing competition,
loves and temporarily loses the friend's sister (Belle Chrystall) and unwittingly
dooms his community to extinction by leaving to find work on the mainland.
As drama, the film is thin. (Powell was to do better in the future, once
he teamed up with scriptwriter Emeric Pressburger.) But as a poem of looming
cliff sides and craggy human faces, of crashing waves and colliding sheep,
The Edge of the World is unforgettable.
Unseen for many years in the United States, The Edge of the World
is now being re-released by Milestone Film and Video in a restored print
(on view in New York at Film Forum, January 14-20). It's a treat. You get
a full measure of the visual splendor and directorial daring for which Powell
is celebrated--how did he persuade his cameramen and actors to keep risking
their necks?--plus a touch of the rustic humor of a later masterpiece,
I Know Where I'm Going.
The restoration of The Edge of the World has been carried out by
the British Film Institute, and the Milestone re-release is going out under
the aegis of one of Michael Powell's greatest admirers, Martin Scorsese.
Thanks to all.
Back to index
